Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The thickened, usually underground base of the stem of many perennial herbaceous plants, from which new leaves and flowering stems arise.
- noun The trunk of a palm or tree fern.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In botany, as used by early writers, the stem of a tree; now, the trunk of a palm or a tree-fern covered with the remains of leaf-stalks or marked with their scars; also, frequently, the perennial base of a plant which sends up new herbaceous stems from year to year in place of the old.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) The stem of a tree., esp. a stem without a branch, as of a palm or a tree fern; also, the perennial rootstock of an herbaceous plant.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun woody stem of palms and tree ferns
- noun persistent thickened stem of a herbaceous perennial plant
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The leaves are its main feature; with age it becomes rather tall, 6ft. to 9ft. high, having a woody hole or caudex, which is largely concealed by the handsome drooping foliage; a few of the youngest leaves from the middle of the tuft remain erect.
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The swollen stem called caudex is basically a reservoir for nutrients and varies from species to species and plant to plant.
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SCCULENTS: Adenium is spectacular for its swollen stems, called caudex, and colourful flowers.
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It was Claudius, and this was the very reason he was surnamed Caudex, because among the ancients a structure formed by joining together several boards was called a caudex, whence also the Tables of the Law are called codices, and, in the ancient fashion, boats that carry provisions up the Tiber are even to-day called codicariae.
doggdot.us 2009
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Adenium socotranum has a special cell sap cycling within the caudex which prevents overheating.
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They are an odd plant from the middle east with a large caudex.
Think Progress » Judge reinstates rule banning roads in national forests. 2006
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The ground is carpeted with a grass of preternaturally vivid green and rankness of growth, mixed with a handsome fern, with a caudex a foot high, the Sadleria cyathoides, and another of exquisite beauty, the Micropia tenuifolia, which are said to be the commonest ferns on Hawaii.
The Hawaiian Archipelago Isabella Lucy 2004
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Some spring from immediately below the earth, and may more properly be termed suckers; the others grow on the visible part of the stem or caudex, often close to the oldest leaves; these should be cut off with a sharp knife, in early summer, and if they have a little of the parent bark attached to them all the better.
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Some sorts, the present one included, are not very readily propagated, as the crowns are not on separate pieces of root, but often crowded on a woody caudex.
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The caudex is altogether similar in structure to that of Alsophyla, equally furnished with strong black bristly radicles towards its base.
Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and the Neighbouring Countries William Griffith
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