Glossary

A

• Achene - A dry indehiscent one-seeded fruit, attached to the pericarp at only one place; formed from a single carpel, the seed is distinct from the fruit, as in Asteracea.
• Acuminate - Gradually tapering sides finished before arriving at the apex or tip.
• Acute - Sharp-pointed.
• Alternate - With a single leaf or other structure at each node.
• Annual - Living one growing season.
• Articulate - Jointed; breaking into distinct pieces without tearing at maturity.
• Auriculate - Having ear-shaped appendages.
• Awn - A bristle on the flowering glumes of grasses (oats).
• Axil - The angle between the leaf or branch and the main axis.

B

• Berry - Simple, fleshy indehiscent (not splitting open) fruit with one or more seeds (tomato, nightshade).
• Biennial - Living two growing seasons.
• Bipinnate - Twice pinnately compound.
• Blade - The expanded part of a leaf or floral part.
• Bract - A small, rudimentary or imperfectly developed leaf.
• Bulb - A bud with fleshy bracts or scales, usually subterranean.

C

• Calyx - The outer set of sterile, floral leaves called sepals.
• Campanulate - Bell-shaped.
• Canescent - Becoming gray or grayish.
• Capitate - Arranged in a head, as the flowers in Compositae.
• Capsule - A dry fruit of two or more carpels, usually dehiscent by valves.
• Carpel - A portion of the ovary or female portion of the flower.
• Catkin - Spike-like inflorescence, unisexual, usually with scaly bracts
• Caulescent - Having a stem.
• Cilia - Fine hairs or projections.
• Ciliate - Having fine hairs or projections, usually as marginal hairs.
• Circumscissile - Opening all around by a transverse split.
• Compound - Composed of several parts or divisions.
• Cordate - Heart-shaped.
• Corolla - The inner set of sterile, usually colored, floral leaves; the petals considered collectively.
• Corymb - A raceme with the lower flower stalks longer than those above, so that all the flowers are at the same level.
• Crenate - With roundish teeth or lobes.
• Cuneate - Wedge-shaped.
• Cuspidate - Having a rigid point.
• Cyme - An inflorescence; a convex or flat flower cluster, the central flowers unfolding.

D

• Deciduous - Dying back; seasonal shedding of leaves or other structures; falling off.
• Decumbent - Lying flat, or being prostrate, but with the tip growing upwards.
• Dentate - Toothed, with outwardly projecting teeth.
• Denticulate - Finely toothed. Diffuse- Loosely spreading.
• Dioecious - Only one sex in a plant; with male or female flowers only.
• Disk(disc) - A flattened enlargement of the receptacle of a flower or inflorescence; the head of tubular flowers, as in sunflower.
• Dissected - Divided into many segments.
• Drupe - A fruit with a fleshy or pulpy outer part and a bone-like inner part; a single- seeded fleshy fruit.
• Drupelet - A small drupe, as one section of a blackberry.

E

• Elliptic - Oval.
• Entire - Without teeth, serrations, or lobes, as in leaf margins.

F

• Fascicle - A cluster of leaves or other structures crowded on a short stem.
• Fibrous - A mass of adventitious fine roots.
• Filiform - Threadlike.
• Flaccid - Limp or flabby.
• Follicle - A many-seeded dry fruit, derived from a single carpel, and splitting longitudinally down one side.
• Fruit - The ripened ovary or ovaries with the attached parts Fuscous - Dingy-brown.

G

• Glabrate - Nearly without hairs.
• Glabrous - Smooth or hairless.
• Glaucous - Covered with a bluish or white bloom.
• Glume - small dry, membranous bract at the base of a grass spikelet

H

• Hastate - Arrow-shaped with the basal lobes spreading.
• Head - A dense inflorescence of sessile or nearly sessile flowers, as in Compositae.
• Hirsute - Having rather coarse, stiff hairs.

I

• Incised - Cut into sharp lobes.
• Indehiscent - Not opening at maturity.
• Inflorescence - The arrangement of flowers on the flowering shoot, as a spike, panicle, head, cyme, umbel, raceme.
• Involucre - Any leaflike structure protecting the reproducing structure, as in flower heads of Compositae and Euphorbiaceae.

K

• Keel - Projecting, united front petals as in the flowers of Fabaceae (peas).

L

• Lanceolate - Flattened, two or three times as long as broad, widest in the middle and tapering to a pointed apex; lance-shaped.
• Leaf sheath - The lower part of a leaf, which envelopes the stem, as in grasses.
• Leaflet - One of the divisions of a compound leaf.
• Legume pod - A dry fruit, splitting by two longitudinal sutures with a row of seeds on the inner side of the central suture; as in family Fabaceae (Leguminosae).
• Lenticular - Bean-shaped; shaped like a double convex lens.
• Ligule - A membrane at the junction of the leaf sheath and leaf base of many grasses.
• Linear - A long and narrow organ with the sides nearly parallel.
• Lobed - Divided to about the middle or less.

M

• Midrib - The central rib of a leaf or other organ; midvein.
• Monoecious - Flowers unisexual, both types on the same plant.

N

• Node - The part of a stem where the leaf, leaves, or secondary branches emerge.
• Nutlet - A one-seeded portion of a fruit that fragments at maturity.

O

• Obcordate - Inversely heart-shaped.
• Oblanceolate - Inversely lanceolate.
• Oblique - With part not opposite, but slightly uneven.
• Oblong - Elliptical, blunt at each end, having nearly parallel sides, two to four times as long as broad.
• Obovate - Inversely ovate.
• Obtuse - Blunt or rounded.
• Ocrea - A thin, sheathing stipule or a united pair of stipules (as in Polygonaceae).
• Orbicular - Nearly circular in outline.
• Ovate - Egg-shaped.

P

• Palmate - Diverging like the fingers of a hand.
• Panicle - An inflorescence, a branched raceme, with each branch bearing a raceme of flowers, usually of pyramidal form.
• Pappus - A ring of fine hairs developed from the calyx, covering the fruit; acting as a parachute for wind-dispersal, as in dandelion.
• Pedicel or peduncle - A short stalk.
• Pedicelled - Having a short stalk, as a flower or fruit.
• Peltate - More or less flattened, attached at the center on the underside.
• Perennial - Growing many years or seasons.
• Perfect - A flower having both stamens and carpels.
• Perfoliate - Leaves clasping the stem, forming cups.
• Perianth - The calyx and corolla together; a floral envelop.
• Pericarp - The body of a fruit developed from the ovary wall and enclosing the seeds.
• Persistent - Remaining attached after the growing season.
• Petal - One of the modified leaves of the corolla; usually the colorful part of a flower.
• Petiole - The unexpanded portion of a leaf; the stalk of a leaf.
• Pilose - Having scattered, simple, moderately stiff hairs.
• Pinnate - Leaves divided into leaflects or segments along a common axis; a compound leaf.
• Pinnatifid - Pinnately cleft to the middle or beyond.
• Pistillate - Female-flowered, with pistils only.
• Prickle - A stiff, sharp-pointed outgrowth from the epidermis, as in Solanum.
• Procumbent - Lying on the ground.
• Puberulent - With very short hairs; woolly.
• Pubescent - Covered with fine, soft hairs.
• Punctate - With translucent dots or glands.

R

• Raceme - An inflorescence, with the main axis bearing stalked flowers, these opening from the base upward.
• Racemose - Like a raceme or in a raceme.
• Rachis - The axis of a pinnately compound leaf ; the axis of inflorescence; the portion of a fern frond to which the pinnae are attached.
• Ray - A marginal flower with a strap-shaped corolla, as in Compositae.
• Receptacle - The end of the flower stalk, bearing the parts of the flower.
• Reniform - Kidney-shaped. Reticulate - netted, as veins in leaves; with a network of fine upstanding ridges, as on the surface of spores.
• Retuse - Having a bluntly rounded apex with a central notch.
• Rhizome - An elongated underground stem, as in ferns.
• Rootstock - An elongated underground stem, usually in higher plants.
• Rosette - A cluster of leaves, usually basal, as in dandelion.

S

• Sagittate - Arrowhead-shaped.
• Scale - A highly modified, dry leaf, usually for protection.
• Scape - A leafless or nearly leafless stem, coming from an underground part and bearing a flower or flower cluster, as in Allium.
• Segment - A division of a compound leaf or of a perianth.
• Sepal - One of the members of the calyx.
• Serrate - With teeth projecting forward.
• Serrulate - Finely serrate.
• Sessile - Lacking a petiole or stalk.
• Sigmoid - S-shaped.
• Silicle - Similar to a silique, but short and broad.
• Silique - A dry elongated fruit divided by a partition between the two carpels.
• Sinuate - With long wavy margins.
• Sinus - A depression or notch in a margin between two lobes.
• Sorus - The brown colored fruiting structure of ferns, usually on the underside of the frond.
• Spatulate - Widened at the top like a spatula.
• Spike - An elongated inflorescence with sessile (stalkless) or nearly sessile flowers.
• Spikelet - A small or secondary spike: the ultimate flower cluster of the inflorescence of grasses and sedges.
• Spine - A short thorn-like structure.
• Spinose - With spines.
• Spinulose - With small, sharp spines.
• Spreading - Diverging from the root and nearly prostrate.
• Stamen - Male reproductive structure of a flower, consisting of the pollen bearing structure (anther) borne on a stalk or filament.
• Staminate - Male- flowered, with stamens only.
• Standard - The large petal that stands up at the back of the flower as in a pea flower.
• Stellate - Star-shaped.
• Stipule - An appendage at the base of a leaf, or other plant part.
• Stolon - A basal branch rooting at the nodes.
• Stramineous - Straw colored.
• Striate - Marked with fine, longitudinal , parallel lines, ridges, or grooves.

T

• Taproot - A strong, fleshy root that grows vertically into the soil, with smaller lateral roots.
• Tendril - Thread-like stem or leaf that clings to adjacent structures for support (peas)
• Ternate - in 3s.
• Tomentose - Densely matted with soft hairs.
• Toothed - Dentate.
• Trifoliate - A compound leaf with 3 leaflets (clover).
• Tuber - Swollen underground stem for storing food (potato, poison hemlock), that can sprout to form new plants.
• Tuberous - Forming tubers.

U

• Ubiquitous - Everywhere, in all types of habitat.
• Umbel - Umbrella-shaped inflorescence, in which the pedicels (flower stalks) radiate from a common point like the ribs of an umbrella.
• Undulate - Wavy, as the margins of leaves.

V

• Veins - The vascular portions of the leaves.
• Villous - Covered with short, fine hairs.
• Viscid - Sticky.

W

• Whorled - Three or more leaves, petals, or branches arranged in a ring at a node.
• Wing - A thin, membranous extension of an organ.

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