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microphyll

British  
/ ˈmaɪkrəʊfɪl /

noun

  1. botany the relatively small type of leaf produced by club mosses and horsetails Compare megaphyll

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
microphyll Scientific  
/ mī′krə-fĭl′ /

  1. A leaf with only one vascular bundle and no complex network of veins. Horsetails and lycophytes (such as club mosses) have microphylls. Microphylls on modern plants are generally small but in extinct phyla the same structures could grow quite large. In contrast to megaphylls, microphylls are thought to have evolved from modifications of a single stem.

Example Sentences

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A microphyll is small and has a simple vascular system.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

The first type of leaf is the microphyll, or “little leaf,” which can be dated to 350 million years ago in the late Silurian.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.