Showing posts with label botany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label botany. Show all posts

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Pachycauls

 Pachycauls are plants with a disproportionately thick trunk for their height, and few branches. In contrast, trees with thin twigs such as Oak (Quercus), Maple (Acer) and Eucalyptus are called leptocauls while those with moderately thick twigs like Plumeria are called mesocauls. Pachycauly can be the product of exceptional primary growth (as with palms and cycads) or disproportionate secondary growth as with the Baobabs (Adansonia). The word is derived from the Greek pachy- meaning thick or stout, and Latin caulis meaning the stem.


 

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

ovate

 

ovate
Shaped like a section through the "long axis" of an egg and attached by the wider end.

 

Monday, May 1, 2023

bract

In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves. They may be smaller, larger, or of a different color, shape, or texture. Typically, they also look different from the parts of the flower, such as the petals or sepals


 

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Marcescence

 Marcescence is the withering and persistence of plant organs that normally are shed, and is a term most commonly applied to plant leaves.


 

Monday, April 24, 2023

rosette

 In botany, a rosette is a circular arrangement of leaves or of structures resembling leaves. 


 

Monday, May 2, 2022

hilum

 

In botany, a hilum (pronounced /ˈhləm/) is a scar or mark left on a seed coat by the former attachment to the ovary wall or to the funiculus (which in turn attaches to the ovary wall). On a bean seed, the hilum is called the "eye".

For some species of fungus, the hilum is the microscopic indentation left on a spore when it separates from the sterigma of the basidium.

 


Tuesday, September 14, 2021

strobilus

 A strobilus (plural: strobili) is a structure present on many land plant species consisting of sporangia-bearing structures densely aggregated along a stem. Strobili are often called cones, but some botanists restrict the use of the term cone to the woody seed strobili of conifers.


 

Sunday, July 11, 2021

silique

 A silique or siliqua (plural siliques or siliquae) is a type of fruit (seed capsule) having two fused carpels with the length being more than three times the width. When the length is less than three times the width of the dried fruit it is referred to as a silicle.

Radish siliques
 

Sunday, October 27, 2019

hanami

Hanami (花見, "flower viewing") is the Japanese traditional custom of enjoying the transient beauty of flowers.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

prolepsis


prolepsis (plural prolepses) NOUN

  1. (rhetoric) The assignment of something to a period of time that precedes it.
  2. (logic) The anticipation of an objection to an argument.
  3. (grammar, rhetoric) A construction that consists of placing an element in a syntactic unit before that to which it would logically correspond.
  4. (philosophy, epistemology) A so-called "preconception", i.e. a pre-theoretical notion which can lead to true knowledge of the world.
  5. (botany) Growth in which lateral branches develop from a lateral meristem, after the formation of a bud or following a period of dormancy, when the lateral meristem is split from a terminal meristem.

Friday, May 1, 2015

Integument

"Integument", as a word, derives from the Latin "integumentum", which literally means "a covering". In transferred or figurative senses, it could mean a cloak or a disguise. In English "integument" is a fairly modern word, its origin having been traced back to the early seventeenth century. It can mean a material or layer with which anything is enclosed, clothed, or covered in the sense of "clad" or "coated", as with a skin or husk.

As a general term in biology the word "integument" refers most commonly to the natural covering of an organism or an organ, such as its skin, husk, shell, or rind.

In botany the senses are similar to those in zoology, referring to the covering of an organ, but when the context indicates nothing to the contrary, the word commonly refers to an envelope of one or more cell layers covering the ovule, leaving only a pore, the micropyle, through which the pollen tube can enter. It also can refer to the testa, or seed coat.

The integument of an organ in zoology typically would comprise membranes of connective tissue such as those around a kidney or liver. In referring to the integument of an animal, the usual sense is its skin and its derivatives: the integumentary system, where "integumentary" is a simile for "cutaneous".

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Fugacious

fleeting; transitory: a sensational story with but a fugacious claim on the public's attention.

source

synanthrope

 A synanthrope (from ancient Greek σύν sýn "together, with" and ἄνθρωπος ánthrōpos "man") is an organism that evolve...