Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various ferns of the widely distributed genus Polypodium, having simple or compound fronds, round sori arranged in one or more rows along the midrib, and creeping rootstocks.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A fern of the genus Polypodium, chiefly P. vulgare, the common polypody, growing commonly on rocks: in England locally called adder's-fern, wall- or wood-fern, polypody of the oak or of the wall, etc. The hoary polypody is P. incanum, a smaller species abounding in tropical America and reaching north to Ohio, having the fronds grayish-scurfy beneath, growing on trees and roofs, also on rocks. Also polypod, polypode.
- n. In zoology, the condition of having many legs or many abdominal legs.
- n. Same as polypodia.
Wiktionary
- n. botany Any of many ferns of the genus Polypodium, especially common polypody.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) Any plant of the genus Polypodium.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any of numerous ferns of the genus Polypodium
Etymologies
- From Anglo-Norman polypodie and its source, Late Latin polypodium. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English polypodie, from Latin polypodium, from Greek polupodion, from diminutive of polupous, many-footed : polu-, poly- + pous, pod-, foot; see -pod. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Farmsteads and hamlets are protected by old walls from which spleenwort and polypody ferns grow.”
“Foxgloves, bright polypody ferns and rushes thrive in the hollows of surface tin workings while wheel pits, settling tanks and buddles associated with the extraction of tin and china clay are masked by scrub, and the derelict structures colonised by spleenwort ferns and moss.”
“A hypertufa trough planter with leptinella, pearlwort and a native fern, polypody.”
“Helleboratus major and minor in Quercetan, and Syrupus Genistae for hypochondriacal melancholy in the same author, compound syrup of succory, of fumitory, polypody, &c.”
“The very best fern is the common brake (Pteris aquilina), as also the common polypody (Polypodium vulgare).”
“The church stands above the road, and beside it a large old tree, whose lower branches are so abundantly covered with polypody that the fronds hang like long fringes from either side of each branch.”
“Some of the boughs, like the trunks, are immensely thick for the height of the trees, and they are covered with very deep cushions of bright green moss and hangings of polypody, and whortleberries grow upon them.”
“In appearance the gray polypody is much like the common species, as the”
The Fern Lover's Companion A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada
“The clusters of fruit-dots containing the spore cases may be open and naked as in polypody (Fig. 2), or covered by an indusium, as in the shield ferns (Fig. 3).”
The Fern Lover's Companion A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada
“Sori (singular _sorus_, a heap), or fruit dots may be naked as in the polypody, but are usually covered with a thin, delicate membrane, known as the indusium (Greek, a dress, or mantle).”
The Fern Lover's Companion A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada
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