spikelet
IPA: spˈaɪkɫɛt
noun
- (botany) A small, or secondary spike, especially one of many in the inflorescence of a grass or sedge.
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Examples of "spikelet" in Sentences
- In a sorghum flower, only one spikelet of each pair is fertile.
- Above about 35°C, however, spikelet fertility drops off noticeably.
- There is usually a complete flower in a spikelet and the glumes are membranous.
- But in grasses the unit of the inflorescence is the = spikelet = and not the flower.
- The _sessile spikelet_ consists of four glumes and contains a complete flower and the callus is short and bearded with long hairs.
- The _spikelets_ are rather small, narrow, greenish or purplish, 1/15 inch long or less, the rachilla is slender, produced to about half the length of the spikelet behind the palea.
- The _spikelets_ are 1/8 to 1/6 inch concealed by long silvery hairs of the callus and the glumes, articulate at the base; callus hairs are about twice as long as the spikelet or longer.
- The racemes consist of many male spikelets with one (rarely two) female spikelets at the base; the rachis is stout above, and the part within the bract enclosing the female spikelet is slender.
- Spikelets are small, 1-flowered, binate, one sessile and the other pedicelled, the sessile spikelet is bisexual and the pedicelled is female and rarely bisexual; sessile spikelets are deciduous with the contiguous joint of the rachis and the pedicel.
- The _spikelets_ are linear-oblong, glabrous or villous, 1/8 to 1/4 inch long, sessile and stalked spikelets close together; the pedicel of the stalked spikelet is thick about 1/3 or less than the length of the sessile spikelet, ciliate on one side, confluent with the thick callus of the sessile spikelet, which is sparsely bristly.
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