stolon

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

• noun Botany A long thin stem that usually grows horizontally along the ground and produces roots and shoots at widely spaced nodes, as in a strawberry plant.
• noun Zoology A stemlike structure of certain colonial organisms from which new individuals arise by budding.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In botany: In phanerogams, a reclined or prostrate branch which strikes root at the tip, developing a new plant. A very slender naked stolon with a bud at the end constitutes a runner, as of the strawberry. See also cut under
• noun In mosses, a shoot running along or under the ground, and eventually rising into the air and producing fully leafed shoots.
• noun In zoology, some proliferated part or structure, likened to the stolon of a plant, connecting different parts or persons of a compound or complex organism, and usually giving rise to new zooids by the process of budding. See cuts under Campanularia and Willsia.
• noun Also stole.

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

• noun (Bot.) A trailing branch which is disposed to take root at the end or at the joints; a stole.
• noun (Zoöl.) An extension of the integument of the body, or of the body wall, from which buds are developed, giving rise to new zooids, and thus forming a compound animal in which the zooids usually remain united by the stolons. Such stolons are often present in Anthozoa, Hydroidea, Bryozoa, and social ascidians. See Illust. under Scyphistoma.

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

• noun botany A shoot that grows along the ground and produces roots at its nodes; a runner.
• noun zoology A structure formed by some colonial organisms from which offspring are produced by budding; see also Stolonifera.

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

• noun a horizontal branch from the base of plant that produces new plants from buds at its tips