Crossword clues for bract
bract
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bract \Bract\, n. [See Bractea.] (Bot.)
A leaf, usually smaller than the true leaves of a plant, from the axil of which a flower stalk arises.
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Any modified leaf, or scale, on a flower stalk or at the base of a flower.
Note: Bracts are often inconspicuous, but sometimes large and showy, or highly colored, as in many cactaceous plants. The spathes of aroid plants are conspicuous forms of bracts. [1913 Webster] ||
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
in botany, "small leaf at the base of a flower," Modern Latin, from Latin bractea, literally "thin metal plate," which is of unknown origin. Related: Bracteal; bracteate.
Wiktionary
n. (context botany English) A leaf or leaf-like structure from the axil out of which a stalk of a flower or an inflorescence arises.
WordNet
n. a modified leaf or leaflike part just below and protecting an inflorescence
Wikipedia
In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis, or cone scale. Bracts are often (but not always) different from foliage leaves. They may be smaller, larger, or of a different color, shape, or texture. Typically, they also look different from the parts of the flower, such as the petals and/or sepals. The state of having bracts is referred to as bracteate or bracteolate, and conversely the state of lacking them is referred to as ebracteate and ebracteolate, without bracts.
Usage examples of "bract".
As it fell it seemed to grow two wings and start to spin like a sycamore bract, which slowed down the fall somewhat.
The crown of the pine-apple, c, consists of a series of empty bracts prolonged beyond the fruit.
The contrast between its purple bracts and the red flowers of the tree was very pretty.
A face swam out of memory: Vur Bract, a youngish man with a bent for merchantry.
There are also bracts, consisting of inert, scalelike organisms that fit over the stem and help protect it from physical damage.
The contrast between its purple bracts and the red flowers of the tree was very pretty.
Each plant was like a large jack-in-the-pulpit or love-in-a-mist or fever-tree flower, in that each thick stemmed bloom was canopied and bowered by great dark green leaves of the sort botanists called spathes and bracts.
As it fell it seemed to grow two wings and start to spin like a sycamore bract, which slowed down the fall somewhat.
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.
In this country it cannot so easily be cultivated in the open as the common Lavender, to which it has a very close similarity, but from which it can be distinguished by the inflorescence, which is more compressed, by the bracts in the axils of which the flowers are placed being much narrower and by the leaves which are broader and spatula shaped.
The flowers grow at the top of the stems, arranged in loose panicles, under each little branch of which is a little floral leaf, or bract.
The bracts are large, egg-shaped and close to the flower, which is nearly as large as the Great Bindweed, and expands in the morning and in bright weather, closing before night.
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.
Sibthorp as Helleborus officinalis, a handsome plant, with a branching stem, bearing numerous serrated bracts, and three to five whitish flowers.
Those sharp little jobbies are mistletoe stems and the involucral bracts of gumweed.