corm

American  

[kawrm] / kɔrm /

noun

Botany.

1. an enlarged, fleshy, bulblike base of a stem, as in the crocus.

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corm British  

/ kɔːm /

noun

1. an organ of vegetative reproduction in plants such as the crocus, consisting of a globular stem base swollen with food and surrounded by papery scale leaves Compare bulb

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corm Scientific  

/ kôrm /

1. A fleshy underground stem that is similar to a bulb but stores its food as stem tissue and has fewer and thinner leaflike scales. The crocus and gladiolus produce new shoots from corms.

2. Compare bulb rhizome runner tuber

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Other Word Forms

• cormlike
  adjective
• cormoid
  adjective
• cormous
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of corm

1820–30; < New Latin cormus < Greek kormós a tree trunk with boughs lopped off, akin to keírein to cut off, hew

Example Sentences

They were tantalized by images circulating online, purportedly taken by locals, that depict a towering banana corm, several stories high, with leaves about 5 yards long.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 18, 2017

The corm is used by gladiolus and garlic.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

The jack-in- the-pulpit root, or corm, tastes and looks like potato.

From "My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George

I grab a huge corm, which we call the makua.

From "Clairboyance" by Kristiana Kahakauwila

The young corm, at first about the diameter of the flower-stalk, grows continuously, till in the following July it attains the size of a small apricot.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 6 "Cockaigne" to "Columbus, Christopher" by Various

Related Words

• corn