Sentence examples for spikelet from inspiring English sources

The primary inflorescence of grasses is the spikelet, a small structure consisting of a short axis, the rachilla, to which are attached chaffy, two-ranked, closely overlapping scales.

The entire spikelet breaks away from the plant as a unit for fruit dispersal.

Special spikelet structures aid in the dispersal and establishment of grass seeds.

In addition to the adaptations that make grasses ecologically successful, the grass spikelet has apparently been a competent means of protecting the flower, developing the fruit, and dispersing the seed.

The reduction of an inflorescence to a single spikelet has occurred repeatedly in different evolutionary lines, usually in conjunction with a reduction in the size of the plant or as an adaptation to extreme habitats, or both.

Spikelets characteristic of Rhynchospora and its allies and Cladium and its allies are derived by a reduction in the number of flowers per spikelet and a sterilization of lowermost or uppermost flowers, as well as by the conversion of some bisexual flowers to staminate only; in Rhynchospora, for example, male flowers are above the perfect flowers, and in Cladium male flowers are below.

The flower spikelets are typically clustered at the stem tips or in the leaf axils and produce fruits with straight or twisted awns.

The spikelets are borne in four or five slender spikes at the tips of the upright stems.

In some sedges, the spikelets are reduced to the point where they simulate a single flower (a pseudanthium), and these highly reduced flowerlike spikelets may then also be arranged, as if they were true flowers, into structures that simulate spikelets formed from true flowers.

Scirpus has many-flowered spikelets with all but the topmost bracts bearing flowers.

Rice and its relatives, for example, produce spikelets without glumes.