Definitions

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

  • noun A lateral meristem in vascular plants, including the vascular cambium and cork cambium, that forms parallel rows of cells resulting in secondary tissues.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In civil law, exchange; the exchange of lands, money, or evidences of debt.
  • noun In botany, a layer of tissue formed between the wood and the bark of exogenous plants.
  • noun A name formerly given to a fancied nutritious humor which was supposed to repair the materials which the body is composed.

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

  • noun (Bot.) A series of formative cells lying outside of the wood proper and inside of the inner bark. The growth of new wood takes place in the cambium, which is very soft.
  • noun (Med.) A fancied nutritive juice, formerly supposed to originate in the blood, to repair losses of the system, and to promote its increase.

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

  • noun botany A layer of cells between the xylem and the phloem that is responsible for the secondary growth of roots and stems.
  • noun obsolete One of the humours formerly believed to nourish the bodily organs.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a formative one-cell layer of tissue between xylem and phloem in most vascular plants that is responsible for secondary growth
  • noun the inner layer of the periosteum

Etymologies

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

[Medieval Latin, exchange, from Late Latin cambīre, cambiāre, to exchange, of Celtic origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin cambium, 'a change'

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