Folium

Folium is a term of Latin origin meaning leaf. It appears in several scientific and technical contexts to denote leaf-like structures or leaf-shaped components, reflecting a shared visual feature rather than a common field of study.

In botany, folium denotes a leaf or leaf-like part of a plant. The singular folium and the plural folia are used in Latin-based botanical terminology. In modern descriptive botany, leaves are more commonly referred to by their standard nomenclature, but folium remains a foundational Latin root in related terms.

In anatomy, folium describes a leaf-like fold or lamina within a structure. The term is used in various anatomical contexts to indicate thin, leaf-shaped regions, and its plural form is folia. A familiar usage is the folia of the cerebellum, which are the leaf-like folds of the cerebellar cortex.

In computing, Folium is also the name of a Python library for creating interactive maps. Folium wraps the Leaflet.js JavaScript library, allowing users to generate web maps using Python code. Maps produced with Folium can include markers, polygons, GeoJSON overlays, and multiple tile layers, and can be saved as standalone HTML files or embedded in other documents. The library supports common mapping features such as popups and tooltips, layer control, and a variety of plugins for advanced functionality, including heatmaps, marker clustering, and time-enabled visualizations. Folium is widely used in data science and geospatial analysis to visualize geographic data within Python workflows.