Search the Dictionary

A genus of herbaceous plants, with racemes of two-spurred or heart-shaped flowers, including the Dutchman's breeches, and the more showy Bleeding heart (D. spectabilis). [Corruptly written dielytra.]

The condition of certain species of plants, in which the stamens and pistil do not mature simultaneously, so that these plants can never fertilize themselves.

Successive division and subdivision, as of a stem of a plant or a vein of the body, into two parts as it proceeds from its origin; successive bifurcation.

A plant whose seeds divide into two seed lobes, or cotyledons, in germinating.

Having two cotyledons or seed lobes; as, a dicotyledonous plant.

A plant with netveined leaves, and monocotyledonous embryos, belonging to the class Dictyogenæ, proposed by Lindley for the orders Dioscoreaceæ, Smilaceæ, Trilliaceæ, etc.

A Linnæan class of plants having four stamens disposed in pairs of unequal length.

To think over and arrange methodically in the mind; to reduce to a plan or method; to receive in the mind and consider carefully; to get an understanding of; to comprehend. Feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer. Sir H. Sidney. How shall this bosom multiplied digest The senate's courtesy Shak.…

A genus of plants including the foxglove.

Walking on the toes; -- distinguished from plantigrade.

The elongation, or angular distance from the sun; -- said chiefly of the inferior planets. [R.]

A Linnæan order of plants having two styles.

Having two plane faces; as, the dihedral summit of a crystal. Dihedral angle, the angular space contained between planes which intersect. It is measured by the angle made by any two lines at right angles to the two planes.

A columnar cactaceous plant of the West Indies (Cereus Swartzii).

-- Space of two dimensions, extension which has length and breadth, but no thickness; a plane or curved surface. -- Space of three dimensions, extension which has length, breadth, and thickness; a solid. -- Space of four dimensions, as imaginary kind of extension, which is assumed to have length, breadth, thickness…

Difference of form between members of the same species, as when a plant has two kinds of flowers, both hermaphrodite (as in the partridge berry), or when there are two forms of one or both sexes of the same species of butterfly. Dimorphism is the condition of the appearance of the same species under two dissimilar form…

A Linnæan class of plants having the stamens and pistils on different plants.

Having the sexes in applied to plants in which the female flowers occur on one individual and the male flowers on another of the same species, and to animals in which the ovum is produced by one individual and the sperm cell by another; -- opposed to monoecious.

e (Bot.), having flowers structurally perfect, but practically dioecious, -- those on one plant producing no pollen, and those on another no ovules.

An insectivorous plant. See Venus's flytrap.