panicle

American  

[pan-i-kuhl] / ˈpæn ɪ kəl /

noun

Botany.

1. a compound raceme.

2. any loose, diversely branching flower cluster.

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panicle British  

/ ˈpænɪkəl /

noun

1. a compound raceme, occurring esp in grasses

2. any branched inflorescence

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panicle Scientific  

/ păn′ĭ-kəl /

1. 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.

2. See illustration at inflorescence

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Other Word Forms

• panicled adjective

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; -i-, -cle ¹

Example Sentences

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

Glumes 3, nearly equal, 5-nerved in the panicle, many nerved in the fertile spikelets; palet a little shorter; all becoming indurated and enclosing the very large grain.

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

Seeds large and flat, wing-margined.—Tall and showy herbs, with a thick root, upright and mostly simple stems, bearing whorled leaves, and numerous peduncled flowers in open cymes, disposed in an ample elongated 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

Spikelets 1-flowered, in a very dense cylindrical spike-like 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

Achenes 10-ribbed; pappus of rather rigid bristles, not plumose.—Perennial herbs, fibrous-rooted, with broad entire leaves, obscurely or not at all punctate, and cymules of small heads in a thyrse 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