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Blakeslee, Albert Francis

(Encyclopedia)Blakeslee, Albert Francis, 1874–1954, American botanist, b. Genesee, New York. He received his Ph.D. at Harvard (1904) and was a member of the faculty until 1907. After several years as professor at...

cotyledon

(Encyclopedia)cotyledon kŏtˌəlēdˈən [key], in botany, a leaf of the embryo of a seed. The embryos of flowering plants, or angiosperms, usually have either one cotyledon (the monocots) or two (the dicots). See...

de Candolle, Augustin Pyrame

(Encyclopedia)de Candolle, Augustin Pyrame də käNdōlˈ [key], 1778–1841, Swiss botanist. Considered the most important Swiss botanist of his era, de Candolle wrote on a wide variety of botanical topics, from m...

Engelmann, George

(Encyclopedia)Engelmann, George ĕngˈəlmən [key], 1809–84, American physician and botanist, b. Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, educated at the universities of Heidelberg and Würzburg (M.D., 1831). Emigrating to A...

tubercle

(Encyclopedia)tubercle to͞oˈbərkyo͞olˌ [key] [Lat.,=little swelling], small, usually solid, nodule or prominence. In anatomy the term is applied to natural prominences in certain muscles, to nerve nuclei of th...

trefoil

(Encyclopedia)trefoil trēˈfoil [key] [O.Fr.,=three-leaf], in botany, name for several plants, chiefly of the pulse family, having trifoliate leaves. Best known of the trefoils is clover. The bird's-foot trefoil (...

Banks, Sir Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Banks, Sir Joseph, 1743–1820, British naturalist and patron of the sciences. He accompanied Capt. James Cook on his voyage around the world and made large collections of biological specimens, most o...

cryptogam

(Encyclopedia)cryptogam, in botany, term used to denote a plant that produces spores, as in algae, fungi, mosses, and ferns, but not seeds. The term cryptogam, from the Greek kryptos, meaning “hidden,” and gamo...

nastic movement

(Encyclopedia)nastic movement, in botany, the movement of plant parts in response either to certain external stimuli or to internal growth stimuli. Nastic movements, which are generally slow, can be observed by tim...

pipsissewa

(Encyclopedia)pipsissewa pĭpsĭsˈəwä [key], any plant of the genus Chimaphila, perennial herbs of dry wooded regions in the Northern Hemisphere. The pipsissewas, closely related to the wintergreens, have thick,...