sepal
Americannoun
noun
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One of the usually separate, green parts that surround and protect the flower bud and extend from the base of a flower after it has opened. Sepals tend to occur in the same number as the petals and to be centered over the petal divisions. In some species sepals are colored like petals, and they can even be indistinguishable from petals, as in the lilies (in what are called tepals). In some groups, such as the poppies, the sepals fall off after the flower bud opens.
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See more at flower
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of sepal
< New Latin sepalum (1790), irregular coinage based on Greek sképē covering and Latin petalum petal
Vocabulary lists containing sepal
Plants (Botany) - Middle School
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Plants (Botany) - High School
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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.
By mutating genes that control polyploidy in the mustardlike plant Arabidopsis thaliana, she and her team discovered that if the sepal had too few polyploid cells, it was stiff and upright and blooming was impeded.
From Science Magazine • Aug. 23, 2023
Goethe recognized that all the parts of a flower, from pistil to sepal, are modified leaves.
From Nature • Aug. 5, 2019
Galea, a helmet-shaped body, as the upper sepal of the Monkshood, 87.
From The Elements of Botany For Beginners and For Schools by Gray, Asa
Caudata.—Upper sepal light yellow dotted with red; lower purplish rose, marbled with white.
From The Woodlands Orchids by Boyle, Frederick
Like that above in petal and sepal, but paler.
From The Woodlands Orchids by Boyle, Frederick
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.
