polypary

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The common supporting framework of a colony of polyps, especially of coral.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. The stock of the Anthozoa and related polyps; a polyp-stock, polypidom, or polyparia; the horny or chitinous outer covering or envelop with which many of the Hydrozoa are furnished. The term is also not uncommonly applied to the very similar structures produced by the Polyzoa; but for these polyzoary is used by those who desire to keep polypary for the Actinozoa and Hydrozoa. The polypary-producing polypides are propagated by budding, and live together in groups or colonies so associated that each group forms a compound animal, whose united coverings form a compound polypary or polypidom, which is their common home, and is at the same time the central stem or stock sustaining the whole. Every individual polyp thus lives in its own proper cavity in the common polypary, from which it protrudes its body and into which it retracts it at pleasure. Also polypiarium.

Wiktionary

1. n. polyparium

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) Same as polypidom.