capitate

American  

[kap-i-tayt] / ˈkæp ɪˌteɪt /

adjective

1. Botany. forming or shaped like a head or dense cluster.

2. Biology. having an enlarged or swollen, headlike termination.

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capitate British  

/ ˈkæpɪˌteɪt /

adjective

1. botany shaped like a head, as certain flowers or inflorescences

2. zoology having an enlarged headlike end

   a capitate bone

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capitate Scientific  

/ kăp′ĭ-tāt′ /

1. The largest of the carpal bones.

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1. Forming a headlike mass or dense cluster, as the flowers of plants in the composite family.

Other Word Forms

• multicapitate
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of capitate

1655–65; < Latin capitātus headed, equivalent to capit- (stem of caput ) head + -ātus -ate ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

capitate

The spikelets are sessile, 3 to 12 flowered, 2 to 3-seriate, secund, laterally compressed and forming digitate whorled or capitate spikes, not joined at the base; rachilla continuous between the flowering glumes.

From A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses by K. Rangachari

Pistils from five to ten, capitate at their summits, affixed laterally to the middle of the seeds, as in Alchemilla.

From Lachesis Lapponica A Tour in Lapland, Volume 1 by Carl von Linn?

This has been observed in pelargoniums and in the Chinese primrose, in both of which the effect was to replace the umbellate form of inflorescence by a capitate one.

From Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants by Maxwell T. Masters

Achenes terete; pappus of the central flowers capillary, of the outer ones mostly none.—Annual, low, branching woolly herbs, with entire leaves, and small heads in capitate clusters.

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 Asa Gray

Stems ascending; leaves round-ovate, petioled, crenate-toothed; whorls capitate; calyx with 10 recurved teeth, the alternate ones shorter; corolla small, white.—Escaped from gardens into waste places.

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 Asa Gray