rooting vs ontogeny

rooting and ontogeny both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
rooting	Yes	No	No	No
ontogeny	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, ontogeny is a hypernym of rooting; that is, ontogeny is a word with a broader meaning than rooting:

rooting: the process of putting forth roots and beginning to grow
ontogeny: (biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level

Other hypernyms of rooting include development, growing, growth, maturation, ontogenesis.

rooting (noun)	ontogeny (noun)
the process of putting forth roots and beginning to grow	(biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level