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
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
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
Capsule many-seeded.—Rank herbs, with mostly opposite leaves, and small greenish-purple or lurid flowers in loose cymes, forming a terminal narrow 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 small, flattened, ovate to lance-ovate, in a loose 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
The most slender form; radical leaves 4–8´ long and 4–6´´ wide, the upper very small, erect, branches of panicle rather few, one-sided; rays 2–5.
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.
