Copy of `USGS - Plants of the Northern Great Plains`

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USGS - Plants of the Northern Great Plains Category: Animals and Nature Date & country: 30/06/2013, USA Words: 397

Acaulescent
Appearing stemless, with leaves and flowers or inflorescences arising directly from the plant base.

Accrescent
Increasing in size with age, often describing a calyx that expands as the fruit matures.

Achene
A small, dry, indehiscent, single-seeded fruit in which the seed coat is separate from the ovary wall.

Achlorophyllous
Lacking chlorophyll and thus nongreen.

Acuminate
Tapering to a slender point.

Acute
Forming an acute angle at either the tip or base.

Adaxial
See ventral.

Adnate
Fused to a different structure as when stamens are attached to petals.

Aggregate
Clustered together.

Anastomosing
Branching and rejoining.

Androgynous
Describing an inflorescence of imperfect flowers in which the male flowers are borne above the female flowers.

Annulus
A row of thick-walled cells in the walls of a sporangium that shrink or expand with changes in moisture to cause rupture of the sporangium and release of the spores.

Anthesis
Flowering time.

Antrorse
Directed upward or forward toward the tip.

Apical
Positioned at the tip or apex of a structure.

Apiculate
With a short, abrupt point at the tip.

Appressed
Lying close to or parallel to an organ or surface.

Arcuate
Moderately arched or curved.

Areolate
With a surface divided into many angular sections.

Aril
An outgrowth from the stalk (funiculus) of an ovule that partly or wholly encloses a seed.

Aristate
Tapered to an awned or bristlelike tip.

Attenuate
Very gradually tapered to a slender apex or base.

Auricle
An earlikelobe or flap.

Auriculate
With earlike lobes.

Awn
A bristlelike projection, often arising from the tip of a structure.

Axil
The angle between a stem and an attached leaf.

Axile
Describing a placentation type in which ovules are attached where the septae intersect in the center of an ovary having two or more cells.

Axillary
In the axil of a leaf or bract Return to Top B

Barbellate
Finely barbed.

Basal
Arising from the base of the plant.

Berry
A fleshy fruit containing few to many seeds

Bidentate
With two teeth.

Bidentulate
Slightly two-toothed.

Bifid
Two-branched or lobed.

Bilabiate
Two-lipped.

Bract
A reduced or otherwise modified leaf that subtends a flower or inflorescence.

Bracteole
A reduced bract, often secondary to larger, main bracts.

Bractlet
A small secondary bract borne on a pedicel or hypanthium of a flower instead of below the pedicel.

Bulb
A short, subterranean stem bearing fleshy, achlorophyllous scale leaves modified for food storage.

Ca.
Abbreviation for circa which means approximately.

Caducous
Early deciduous.

Calcareous
Describing soil or water with a high CaCO₃ (lime) content.

Callus
The thickened, sometimes pointed extension at the base of a grass floret where the lemma attaches to the rachilla.

Calyx
The sepals of a flower collectively.

Campanulate
Bell-shaped.

Canescent
With dense, fine, whitish hairs that give the surface a gray, hairy appearance.

Capillary
Very slender; hairlike or nearly so.

Capitate
Headlike or borne in a head.

Capsule
A dry, nonfleshy fruit containing few to many seeds, usually dehiscent at maturity.

Carpel
In angiosperms, a modified ovule (seed)-bearing leaf, one or more of which make up a pistil. A simple pistil is comprised of one carpel, whereas a compound pistil is composed of two or more carpels fused together. The number of carpels making up a compound pistil is often indicated by: (1) the number of styles, style branches or stigma lobes; (2) t...

Carpophore
A slender stalk that supports the two mericarps (carpels) as they separate at maturity in fruits of the Apiaceae; an upward extension of the receptacle between the carpels.

Cartilaginous
Firm but flexible, like cartilage in texture.

Catkin
A soft, spikelike inflorescence of unisexual flowers typical of many trees and shrubs, often early deciduous.

Caudal
Taillike.

Caudex
A short, thickened, often woody, vertical or branched perennial stem, usually at or below ground level.

Caulescent
With an above-ground, leafy stem.

Cauline
Of the stem.

Cespitose
Growing in tufts or dense clumps.

Chaffy
Having the texture of the chaff (lemmas, paleas and glumes) removed from grain during harvesting or milling; or, in the Asteraceae, describing a receptacle (disk) that has chaffy bracts among the flowers.

Chartaceous
Papery-textured and opaque.

Cilia
Prominent hairs on a margin.

Ciliate
Fringed with cilia.

Ciliolate
Minutely ciliate.

Circinate
Coiled in the bud, with the apex in the center of the coil, usually describing leaves that unfurl from a coil.

Circumscissile
Describing a round fruit that dehisces horizontally so that the top portion comes off like a lid to release the seed or seeds.

Clasping
Partly or completely surrounding the stem.

Clavate
Club-shaped.

Claw
The lower portion of a petal that is long and narrow toward the base and broadened toward the tip.

Cleft
Cut into lobes.

Cleistogamous
Descriptive of the flowers that remain closed in the bud or hidden in sheaths or bracts and are thus self-pollinated and fertilized.

Coma
A ring or tuft of fine hairs on a seed, functional in wind dispersal.

Commissure
A place where two similar parts adjoin.

Compressed
Flattened.

Conduplicate
Describing a leaf or modified leaf which is folded upward along the midrib.

Confluent
Merging or blending of one part to another.

Conic
Cone-shaped.

Connate
Fused together along the margins.

Connivent
Having margins closely adherent to those of an adjacent structure but without fusion.

Contorted
Twisted or bent.

Convolute
Descriptive of perianth parts or leaves which are rolled up and often twisted epically in the bud so that the margins of the perianth members or leaves successively overlap.

Cordate
Heart-shaped at the base, with 2 rounded lobes.

Coriaceous
Thick, tough and leathery.

Corm
A short, fleshy, underground stem functioning in food storage, usually covered by papery-thin, modified leaves.

Cormose
Having a corm.

Corniculate
Having one or more small hornlike projections.

Corolla
The petals of the flower collectively, especially when united.

Corrugated
Irregularly folded or wrinkled.

Corymb
A flat-topped or convex, racemose inflorescence.

Corymbiform
Describing an inflorescence in which the flowers or flower heads are elevated to the same level on different branches so that the inflorescence or units of it appear flat-topped or convex.

Crenate
With low, rounded teeth on the margin.

Crisped
Irregularly curled or crinkled on the margin.

Cucullate
With a blunt, hood-shaped tip.

Culm
The stem of a grass or grasslike plant, especially one bearing an inflorescence.

Cuneate
Tapered to an acute base.

Cupulate
Cup-shaped.

Cuspidate
With a terminal toothlike projection.

Cylindric(al)
Cylinder-shaped.

Cyme
An inflorescence in which each flower is terminal, either on the main stem or a branch.

Cystolith
An intercellular mineral deposit that accumulates in some of the epidermal cells of some plants. Return to Top D

Deciduous
Eventually falling off.