Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A leaflike or scalelike plant part, usually small, sometimes showy or brightly colored, and located just below a flower, a flower stalk, or an inflorescence.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In botany, a leaf in a flower-cluster or subtending a flower, usually differing somewhat from an ordinary leaf in size, form, or texture, often much reduced, and sometimes petaloid, highly colored, and very conspicuous.
- noun In zoology, a part of a hydrozoan likened to a bract of a plant; a hydrophyllium. See cuts under
Athorybia and hydrophyllium. - noun A thin plate of metal used as an ornament, as, for example, one of the gold disk-like ornaments made in Scandinavian countries in the Viking age.
- noun The oval distal exite on the appendages of certain segments of phyllopod crustaceans, as Apus, probably serving a respiratory function.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A leaf, usually smaller than the true leaves of a plant, from the axil of which a flower stalk arises.
- noun Any modified leaf, or scale, on a flower stalk or at the base of a flower.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun botany A
leaf or leaf-like structure from theaxil of which a the stalk of aflower or aninflorescence arises.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a modified leaf or leaflike part just below and protecting an inflorescence
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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A bract is a modified leaf at the base of a flower, and is often more showy than the flower itself - the red bracts of poinsettias are another example.
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Some varieties, such as the fishpole heliconia, have bract clusters that dangle.
Coffee, swamp lily and heliconia: ornamental plants and flowers of tropical Mexico 2008
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Some varieties, such as the fishpole heliconia, have bract clusters that dangle.
Coffee, swamp lily and heliconia: ornamental plants and flowers of tropical Mexico 2008
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Photographed in Mexico, the fishpole heliconia has bract clusters that dangle.
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For example, in “Marble Bubble Bobble,” Scott develops the impressionistic swerve of “Umbra marbles drench the ravine slot, divot light, a barreled birch grasps citrus palm as pumice, as coastal groove hulls plunge pool, the cervical troll, pawpaw bract.”
derek beaulieu on blert Lemon Hound 2008
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For example, in “Marble Bubble Bobble,” Scott develops the impressionistic swerve of “Umbra marbles drench the ravine slot, divot light, a barreled birch grasps citrus palm as pumice, as coastal groove hulls plunge pool, the cervical troll, pawpaw bract.”
Archive 2008-08-01 Lemon Hound 2008
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In the plant, the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed.
Representative Men 2006
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In that plan, I raised tobacco taxes, I raise alcohol taxes, I raise the upper income tax bract on the largest and the highest 4 percent of all Californians.
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Bracteoles Small, usually scale-like bracts on or close to the calyx of a flower, above the bract.
Chapter 9 1999
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In one short-season variety, some farmers are selecting for tough outer glumes (the papery coat or bract around the seed) and long awns (the hair-like bristle growing out from the glume) which help protect the grains from birds, a major pest of early rice.
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