Crossword clues for pistil
pistil
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pistel \Pis"tel\, Pistil \Pis"til\, n. An epistle. [Obs.]
Pistil \Pis"til\, n. [L. pistillum, pistillus, a pestle: cf. F. pistil. See Pestle.] (Bot.) The seed-bearing organ of a flower. It consists of an ovary, containing the ovules or rudimentary seeds, and a stigma, which is commonly raised on an elongated portion called a style. When composed of one carpel a pistil is simple; when composed of several, it is compound. See Illust. of Flower, and Ovary.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"female organ of a flower," 1718, from French pistil, from Modern Latin pistillum "a pistil," so called from resemblance to a pestle, from Latin pistillum "pestle" (see pestle). Related: Pistillary; pistillaceous; pistillate; pistilline.
Wiktionary
n. (context botany English) A discrete organ in the center of a flower capable of receiving pollen and producing a fruit, it is divided into an ovary, style and stigma. (from 18th c.)
WordNet
n. the female ovule-bearing part of a flower composed of ovary and style and stigma
Usage examples of "pistil".
Some plants, like humans, kept their sexes separate, the male anther in one flower, even in the flowers of one plant, and the female pistil, style, and ovary in a second flower or plant.
For in continuance of the vertical principle of the plant, the pistil and carpel represent the male aspect in the process of spiritual anastomosis, and the mobile, wind- or insect-borne pollen, in continuing the spiral principle, represents the female part.
Botany had lavished there its most elegant drapery of ferns of all kinds, snap-dragons with their violet mouths and golden pistils, the blue anchusa, the brown lichens, so that the old worn stones seemed mere accessories peeping out at intervals from this fresh growth.
I remember, a particularly charming plant, androgynous, you can see a lot of stamens and pistils, an androecium and a gynaeceum, if I remember rightly.
Those flowers, also, which had their stamens and pistils placed, in relation to the size and habits of the particular insects which visited them, so as to favour in any degree the transportal of their pollen from flower to flower, would likewise be favoured or selected.
Taking one of the flowers from the bunch, Asenath, as they slowly walked forward, proceeded to dissect it, explained the mysteries of stamens and pistils, pollen, petals, and calyx, and, by the time they had reached the village, had succeeded in giving him a general idea of the Linnaean system of classification.
Ferns and evergreenlike plants grew in abundance, unfurling long pistils and colorful red blooms.
It is familiar to almost every one, that in a flower the relative position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are intelligible on the view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves, arranged in a spire.
Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern?
Every floral unit on the grounds has its pistil aprick and petals atremble in a truly shameless fashion, for the bees are about.
A flower of a Mahonia was cemented to a stick, and the stamens exhibited no signs of circumnutation under the microscope, yet when they were lightly touched they suddenly moved towards the pistil.
A pistillate flower cluster is ripe for fertilization so long as pale, slender pistils emerge from the calyxes.
The tube contains a haploid (in) generative nucleus and grows downward toward the ovule at the base of the pistils.
The pistil is generally divisible into the ovary or germen, the style and the stigma.
It is familiar to almost every one, that in a flower the relative position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are intelligible in the view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves, arranged in a spire.