corymb

American  

[kawr-imb, -im, kor-] / ˈkɔr ɪmb, -ɪm, ˈkɒr- /

noun

Botany.

1. a form of inflorescence in which the flowers form a flat-topped or convex cluster, the outermost flowers being the first to open.

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corymb British  

/ ˈkɒrɪmb, -rɪm /

noun

1. an inflorescence in the form of a flat-topped flower cluster with the oldest flowers at the periphery. This type of raceme occurs in the candytuft

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corymb Scientific  

/ kôr′ĭmb,-ĭm /

1. An indeterminate inflorescence whose outer flowers have longer stalks than the inner flowers, so that together they form a round cluster that is rather flat on top. The outer flowers open before the inner ones. Yarrow and the hawthorn have corymbs.

2. See illustration at inflorescence

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Other Word Forms

• corymbed
  adjective
• corymblike
  adjective
• corymbose
  adjective
• corymbosely
  adverb

Etymology

Origin of corymb

1700–10; < Latin corymbus < Greek kórymbos head, top, cluster of fruit or flowers

Example Sentences

The shortening of these pedicels, so as to render the flowers sessile or nearly so, converts a raceme into a Spike, and a corymb or an umbel into a Head.

From The Elements of Botany For Beginners and For Schools by Gray, Asa

Attached to one of the four silken tassels which ornamented the lamp-shade, so as almost to rest upon the cheek of the sleeping man, was a little corymb of bloom … the Flower of Silence!

From The Hand Of Fu-Manchu Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor by Rohmer, Sax

Otherwise as Tussilago.—Perennial woolly herbs, with the leaves all from the rootstock, white-woolly beneath, the scape with sheathing scaly bracts, bearing heads of purplish or whitish fragrant flowers, in a corymb.

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 Gray, Asa

Smooth, slender; leaves very narrowly linear, mostly 1-nerved, dotted; heads obovoid-club-shaped, in numerous clusters of 2 or 3, disposed in a loose corymb; rays 6–12.—Sandy fields, Mass. to Ill., and southward; common near the coast.

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 Gray, Asa

That is, a raceme becomes a corymb by lengthening the lower pedicels while the uppermost remain shorter.

From The Elements of Botany For Beginners and For Schools by Gray, Asa