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This glossary of botanical terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to botany and plants in general. Terms of plant morphology are included here as well as at the more specific Glossary of plant morphology and Glossary of leaf morphology. For other related terms, see Glossary of phytopathology and List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names.
The tip; the point furthest from the point of attachment.
Imperfect or irregular leaf endings commonly found on ferns and fossils of ferns from the Carboniferous Period.
A type of asexual reproduction whereby viable seeds or spores are produced asexually, without fertilization, such that the genetic material they contain is a clone of the parent's genetic material. A plant produced in this way is called an apomict.
A taxonomically arranged collection of trees.
Width of one lumen of a pollen grain reticulum and half of the width of the surrounding muri (walls), hence heterobrochate and homobrochate, where the lumina are of different or similar sizes, respectively.
1. A protruding mass of tissue
A collective term for the sepals of one flower; the outer whorl of a flower, usually green. Compare corolla .
The stem of a plant, especially a woody one; also used to mean a rootstock, or particularly a basal stem structure or storage organ from which new growth arises. Compare lignotuber .
Very small hairs or hair-like protrusions more or less confined to the margins of an organ, as with eyelashes; in motile cells, minute, hair-like protrusions which aid motility.
A continuous morphological variation in form within a species or sometimes between two species.
In lichens, the "skin" or outer layer of thallus tissue that covers the medulla. Fruticose lichens have one cortex encircling the branches, even flattened, leaf-like forms; foliose lichens have different upper and lower cortices; crustose, placodioid, and squamulose lichens have an upper cortex but no lower cortex; and leprose lichens lack any cortex.
An inflorescence with branches arising at different points but reaching about the same height, giving the flower cluster a flat-topped appearance.
An inflorescence of unisexual flowers surrounded by involucral bracts, especially the flowers of Euphorbia .
A type of inflorescence in which the main axis and all lateral branches end in a flower (each lateral may be repeatedly branched).
A flowering plant whose embryo has two or more cotyledons (seed leaves). Contrast monocotyledon .
A plate or ring of structures derived from the receptacle, and occurring between whorls of floral parts. In some groups, especially Sapindales, the nectary is in the form of a prominent disk. In daisies, the central part of the capitulum is a disk, hence flowers borne there are called disk flowers or florets.
Any hollow structure formed by a plant that is inhabited by animals such as ants or mites.
Planar, shaped like a flattened circle, symmetrical about both the long and the short axis, tapering equally both to the tip and the base; oval.
(of crustose lichens) Having the thallus growing within rather than upon the bark of trees. [12] : 159 Compare epiphloedal and corticolous (growing on the surface of wood or bark) and endolithic (growing within rock).
A cluster, e.g. a tuft of leaves all arising from the same node.
A group of one or more species with features or ancestry (or both) in common. Genus is the principal category of taxa intermediate in rank between family and species in the standard nomenclatural hierarchy.
Roughly spherical. See also subglobose.