plumule

American  

[ploom-yool] / ˈplum jul /

noun

1. Botany. the bud of the ascending axis of a plant while still in the embryo.

2. Ornithology. a down feather.

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plumule British  

/ ˈpluːmjuːl /

noun

1. the embryonic shoot of seed-bearing plants

2. a down feather of young birds that persists in some adults

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plumule Scientific  

/ plo̅o̅m′yo̅o̅l /

1. The young shoot of a plant embryo, situated above the cotyledons and consisting of the epicotyl and often of immature leaves.

2. See more at germination

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Other Word Forms

• plumular
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of plumule

1720–30; < New Latin, Latin plūmula. See plume, -ule

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

plumule

Beginning germination of the Beech, showing the plumule growing before the cotyledons have opened or the root has scarcely formed.

From The Elements of Botany For Beginners and For Schools by Gray, Asa

Oft as morning wreathes my scarf, Fled the last plumule of the Dark, Pants up hither the spruce clerk From South Cove and City Wharf.

From Poems Household Edition by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The axis, which is differentiated into the plumule directed upward and the radicle downward, is small and straight and it is covered more or less by the edges of the scutellum.

From A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses by Rangachari, K.

Cotyledons very thick and fleshy, their contiguous faces coherent, remaining under ground in germination; plumule 2-leaved; radicle curved.—Trees or shrubs.

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

For example, the single plumule which develops from a germinating wheat embryo has at its upper end a hundred or more tiny growing points.

From The Chemistry of Plant Life by Thatcher, Roscoe Wilfred

Related Words

• fringe
• plume