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

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Etymology

Origin of capitate

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

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

capitate

Its flowers are purple, lilac, or rose-colored—never yellow; the anthers are basifixed—i.e. fixed by their bases—not versatile; and the stigma, instead of being capitate, has four linear lobes.

From The Wild Flowers of California: Their Names, Haunts, and Habits by Mary Elizabeth Parsons

Spikelets and numerous flowers compressed, crowded in a densely spiked or capitate panicle.

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

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

Styles 5 or more, tipped with capitate stigmas; the ripe fruit separating into as many 1-seeded carpels, which are closed, or commonly 2-valved at the top, and tardily separate from the axis.

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

Flowers few, sessile and capitate clustered on the mostly long peduncles.

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

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