sprouting vs ontogeny

sprouting and ontogeny both are nouns.

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

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

sprouting: the process whereby seeds or spores sprout and begin 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 sprouting include development, growing, growth, maturation, ontogenesis.

sprouting (noun)	ontogeny (noun)
the process whereby seeds or spores sprout and begin 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