kasi

kasi is any number of types of plants. big plants like trees are kasi, and small plants like weeds are too! anything largely in the category of "plant" is a kasi. There's some controversy about fungi, though. many believe them to be within kasi's semantic space, while others disagree entirely and use a new word,

(which is relatively commonplace). if you want to learn about someone's view on this, just pull up a picture of a mushroom and ask "ni li seme?" and wait for their response. As a child I was always interested in taxonomy and I can't remember ever not knowing that fungi were fundementally different from plants, so using a word for both seems wrong. Fungi are just so different to me! But I understand that there are hundreds if not thousands of toki pona speakers who don't share that perspective and only use kasi.