sessile
Americanadjective
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Botany. attached by the base, or without any distinct projecting support, as a leaf issuing directly from the stem.
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Zoology. permanently attached; not freely moving.
adjective
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(of flowers or leaves) having no stalk; growing directly from the stem
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(of animals such as the barnacle) permanently attached to a substratum
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Permanently attached or fixed and not free-moving, as corals and mussels.
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Stalkless and attached directly at the base, as certain kinds of leaves and fruit.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of sessile
1715–25; < Latin sessilis fit for sitting on, low enough to sit on, dwarfish (said of plants), equivalent to sess ( us ) (past participle of sedēre to sit 1 ) + -ilis -ile
Vocabulary lists containing sessile
Marine Biology - Middle School
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Marine Biology - 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.
It has been trying to restore the woodlands by introducing downy birch, sessile oak, hazel, willow, aspen and alder as well as endangered tree species such as Arran whitebeam.
From BBC • Apr. 28, 2025
Researchers learned that sessile invertebrates -- those that stay in one place, such as mussels and barnacles -- became more abundant during the study period, while seaweed species like kelps declined.
From Science Daily • Jun. 4, 2024
Studies of other kinds of deep-sea disturbances, including deep-sea trawling and oil and gas operations, have suggested that sessile animals are especially vulnerable, sometimes taking decades to recover.
From Scientific American • Jul. 18, 2023
Many sessile organisms feed on organic material that drifts down from upper layers in the water column.
From Scientific American • Jul. 18, 2023
Corymbosely much branched; heads small, sessile, in little clusters crowded in flat-topped corymbs; the closely appressed involucral scales somewhat glutinous; receptacle fimbrillate; rays 6–20, short, more numerous than the disk-flowers; leaves narrow, entire, sessile.
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.
