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

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

From "Clairboyance" by Kristiana Kahakauwila

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

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

The parent corm remains attached to the new one, and keeps its form and size till April in the third year of its existence, after which it decays.

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

Related Words

• corn