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 sematnic space, while others disagree entirely and use a new word, "soko" (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. Wether you use kasi to describe mushrooms or not says a lot about how you categorize life. For example, growing up I was told that mushrooms were not plants, so I developed schemes to interpret them differently. Using kasi for a mushroom doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But that might be completely different for someone else. I often go for "kili" rather than the word "soko." when describing mushrooms.