microphyll

British

/ ˈmaɪkrəʊfɪl /

noun

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′ /

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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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

A microphyll is small and has a simple vascular system.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

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