Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A group of one or more whorls of bracts beneath a flower or flower cluster.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany, any collection of bracts round a cluster of flowers.
  • noun In anatomy, a membranous envelop. as the pericardium.
  • noun 3, In zoology, an involucrum.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A whorl or set of bracts around a flower, umbel, or head.
  • noun A continuous marginal covering of sporangia, in certain ferns, as in the common brake, or the cup-shaped processes of the filmy ferns.
  • noun The peridium or volva of certain fungi. Called also involucrum.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun botany Conspicuous bract, bract pair or ring of bracts at the base of an inflorescence.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a highly conspicuous bract or bract pair or ring of bracts at the base of an inflorescence

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Latin involūcrum, wrapper, envelope; see involucrum.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • A collection or rosette of bracts beneath or around a flower or flower cluster.

    July 24, 2007

  • Thanks for highlighting this word, R. I must put it on my key it out list (which I need to work on--it is far from complete). But I have been having too much fun! ;-)

    July 24, 2007

  • acorn-cup: the hardened involucre covering the base of an acorn.

    June 7, 2015