panicle
Americannoun
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a compound raceme.
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any loose, diversely branching flower cluster.
noun
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a compound raceme, occurring esp in grasses
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any branched inflorescence
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A branched indeterminate inflorescence in which the branches are racemes, so that each flower has its own stalk (called a pedicel) attached to the branch. Oats and sorghum have panicles.
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See illustration at inflorescence
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of panicle
1590–1600; < Latin pānicula tuft (on plants), diminutive of pānus thread wound on a bobbin, a swelling, ear of millet < Doric Greek pânos ( Attic pênos ) a web; see -i-, -cle 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The vine produces a panicle of lovely half-inch flowers in midsummer, each pointing downward and similar in shape to a tomato’s, but far more dramatically colored.
From New York Times • Jul. 27, 2017
Flowers diœcious, small, in a terminal naked panicle; herbage sour; some leaves halberd-shaped; smooth perennials, spreading by running rootstocks, flowering in spring.
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
Leaves all lyrate or runcinate, the upper often with a heart-shaped clasping base; panicle larger; achenes distinctly beaked; otherwise as n. 7.—Rich soil, Penn. to Ill., and southward.
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
Heads small, in a narrow virgate or thyrsoid panicle; scales thin, acute; leaves nearly entire.
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
Stigmas plumose.—Perennials, with rigid leaves and a narrow raceme or panicle.
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
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.
