aerial root

Scientific  

/ âr′ē-əl /

1. A root that develops from a location on a plant above the surface of the earth or water, as from a stem. For example, some orchids have aerial roots that grow from their stems and absorb water directly from the air.

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Example Sentences

It has a stiltlike aerial root system, similar to mangrove trees, and rises to a height of 10 meters or more, spreading spiny, palmlike fronds.

From Science Magazine

Fourth in the primary was tough-talking Congressman Jimmy Morrison, another old aerial root off Louisiana's once-flourishing political banyan tree.

From Time Magazine Archive

An aerial root that formed a sort of ladder by which one climbed the mountain steeps; literally a shaking sling.

From Project Gutenberg

They look most respectable, their foliage rising densely in a wall irregularly striped here and there by the white line of an aërial root, coming straight down into the water from some upper branch as straight as a plummet, in the strange, knowing way an aërial root of a mangrove does, keeping the hard straight line until it gets some two feet above water-level, and then spreading out into blunt fingers with which to dip into the water and grasp the mud. 

From Project Gutenberg