imperfect flower

American  

[im-pur-fikt flau-er] / ɪmˈpɜr fɪkt ˈflaʊ ər /

noun

1. Botany. a flower that has either male stamens or a female pistil, but not both; a unisexual or diclinous flower.

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imperfect flower Scientific  

/ ĭm-pûr′fĭkt /

1. A flower that lacks either stamens or carpels.

2. Compare perfect flower See also incomplete flower

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Example Sentences

Spikelets 2–6-flowered, with a terminal imperfect flower or naked rudiment, closely imbricate-spiked on one side of a flattish rhachis; the spikes digitate.

From The Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States Including the District East of the Mississippi and North of North Carolina and Tennessee by Gray, Asa

Never was there a fitter emblem than the imperfect flower he threw away.

From A Face Illumined by Roe, Edward Payson

Spikelets ovoid or oblong, of several loosely imbricated scales; the lower empty, one or two above bearing a staminate or imperfect flower; the terminal flower perfect and fertile.

From The Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States Including the District East of the Mississippi and North of North Carolina and Tennessee by Gray, Asa

Whether this plant be a Scabious, Thrift or Helichrysum is hard to judge from the imperfect flower of the dried specimen.

From A Voyage to New Holland by Dampier, William

My part will, I trust, vanish in due time, and the law turn out to have been, after all, only the imperfect gospel, just as the leaf is the imperfect flower.

From The Vicar's Daughter by MacDonald, George