Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The axis of a spikelet of a grass or sedge.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany, a little rachis; a secondary rachis in a compound inflorescence, as of a spikelet in a grass.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) Same as rhachilla.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun botany The part of a spikelet, in grasses and sedges, that bears the florets
  • noun botany A rachis of secondary or higher order in leaves and ferns that are compound more than once.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin, diminutive of rachis.]

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Examples

  • The _fourth glume_ is borne by a short rachilla which is about

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • But the rachilla of the spikelet may be jointed just above the empty glumes or between the flowering glumes.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • Spikelets are small, biseriate and crowded on one side of the spike and not jointed at the base; rachilla is slender, jointed and produced beyond the flowering glumes and bearing an imperfect glume.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • The _spikelets_ are ovate-oblong or linear-oblong, pale or purplish 1/6 to 1/2 inch, up to 50-flowered, rachilla is tough with very short internodes.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • The rachilla is produced beyond the fourth glume and it terminates in an awned rudimentary glume.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • The spikelets are usually 1-flowered and the rachilla is jointed at the base just above the empty glumes and it is not produced beyond the flowering glume.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • Usually the glumes are rather close together on the rachilla so that the internodes are very short; but in some grasses, as in _Dinebra arabica_, the glumes are rather distant and so the internodes are somewhat longer and conspicuous.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • Flowering glumes are imbricating, at length deciduous from the rachilla, 3-nerved, all bisexual or the uppermost and rarely the lowest imperfect, ovate to lanceolate, membranous to chartaceous, usually glabrous, the lateral nerves short not reaching the mid nerve; palea are broad, membranous, deciduous with its glume or persistent on the rachilla with two ciliate smooth or scabrid keels.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • The spikelets are sessile, 3 to 12 flowered, 2 to 3-seriate, secund, laterally compressed and forming digitate whorled or capitate spikes, not joined at the base; rachilla continuous between the flowering glumes.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • Panicum the rachilla is jointed to the pedicel below the empty glumes, whereas it is articulated just above these glumes in _Chloris barbata_.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

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