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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Floret

Floret \Flo"ret\, n. [OF. florete, F. fleurette, dim. of OF. lor, F. fleur. See Flower, and cf. Floweret, 3d Ferret.]

  1. (Bot.) A little flower; one of the numerous little flowers which compose the head or anthodium in such flowers as the daisy, thistle, and dandelion.
    --Gray.

  2. [F. fleuret.] A foil; a blunt sword used in fencing. [Obs.]
    --Cotgrave.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
floret

c.1400, flourette, "a little flower, a bud," from Old French florete "little flower," also the name of a cheap silk material, diminutive of flor "flower, blossom" (see flower (n.)). Botany sense "small flower in a cluster" is from 1670s.

Wiktionary
floret

n. A small flower, especially one of a cluster in a composite flower

WordNet
floret

n. a diminutive flower (especially one that is part of a composite flower)

Usage examples of "floret".

Its blooms have the quality of keeping clean, doubtless from the smoothness of the florets.

What had seemed to be a cluster of florets was a much embellished thorax.

South of the Via Valeria the country was solid vineyard, a vast expanse of grapes grown inside small high-walled enclosures to protect them from the bitter winds which swept off the mountains at just that time of year when the tender grape florets were forming and the insects needed calm air to pollinate.

Columba livia, parent of domestic pigeons Colymbetes Compositae, outer and inner florets of.

It is frequent in cornfields and so remarkably like the Corn Chamomile (Anthemis arvensis) that it is often difficult to distinguish it from that plant, but it is not ranked among the true Chamomiles by botanists because it does not possess the little chaffy scales or bracts between its florets.

Stinking Chamomile or Stinking Mayweed (Anthemis cotula), an annual, common in waste places, resembles the true Chamomile, having large solitary flowers on erect stems, with conical, solid receptacles, but the white florets have no membraneous scales at their base.

The genus derives its name from the Greek words chrisos (golden) and anthos (flower), and contains only two indigenous species this and the Corn Marigold, in which the whole flower is yellow, not only the central disc of florets, as in the Daisy.

The flowers are without the spreading outer rays of the Greater Knapweed, the florets being all tubular, which makes the black fringes to the bracts of the involucre most noticeable, hence the name of the species.

It is considered that the curative properties of the single, wild Chamomile are the more powerful, as the chief medical virtue of the plant lies in the central disk of yellow florets, and in the cultivated double form the white florets of the ray are multiplied, while the yellow centre diminishes.