germens

Lear walks about the heath and says words which are meant to express his despair: he desires that the winds should blow so hard that they should crack their cheeks and that the rain should flood everything, that lightning should singe his white head, and the thunder flatten the world and destroy all germens "that make ungrateful man!"

Tolstoy on Shakespeare A Critical Essay on Shakespeare Leo Tolstoy 1869

*** From their verticillate arrangement it is evident that these petaloid expansions were not transformed seeds, but simply a development of the common axis within the ovary into an abortive whorl of floral organs, besides which there were evident rudiments both of stamens and germens in the centre of the bundle. "

Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters