Definitions

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

  • noun The arrangement of leaves on a stem.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany, the distribution or arrangement of leaves on the stem; also, the laws collectively which govern such distribution.

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

  • noun botany The arrangement of leaves on a stem, or the mathematical principles governing such arrangement.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek φύλλον (phullon, "leaf") + τάξις (taksis, "arrangement"), from τάσσω (tassō, "arrange").

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Examples

  • The ancestral state in other characters is equivocal: e.g., bisexual vs. unisexual flowers, whorled vs. spiral floral phyllotaxis, presence vs. absence of tepal differentiation, anatropous vs. orthotropous ovules.

    A Disclaimer for Behe? 2009

  • A connection between mathematics and the prior topic of vegetables: Fractal food - "Self-Similarity on the Supermarket Shelf" - John Walker's new Fourmilab page on the lovely Romanesco broccoli (an excellent example of phyllotaxis).

    Reconstructing the unicorn Ray Girvan 2005

  • The leaves, which are spirally arranged with phyllotaxis

    Chapter 11 1987

  • The leaves are spirally arranged, phyllotaxis 2/5, and may be green or purple, with or without hairs and also showing a great variation in form.

    Chapter 24 1987

  • Leaves are spirally arranged along the stems with phyllotaxis 2/5; they may be shouldered, toothed, entire, deeply cleft or variously lobed and the petioles vary in length, thickness and degree of erectness.

    Chapter 30 1987

  • Almanac, and had applied his knowledge to a theory about the optimal arrangement of leaves around the stems of plants (phyllotaxis) to obtain maximum ex - posure to air and sunlight.

    PRAGMATISM PHILIP P. WIENER 1968

  • This will be the more readily conceded when it is remembered that the phyllotaxis of leaves not unfrequently varies on different branches of the same individual tree, and that a similar variation in the flower would at once disturb the customary alternate arrangement.

    Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters

  • The law of phyllotaxis, like that of the elastic curve, is carried out in time as well as in space.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860 Various

  • Alex and Karl could experience the excitement of finding out a law which everyone knows now, the neat uncrowded arrangement of leaves called phyllotaxis?

    Runner of the Mountain Tops: The Life of Louis Agassiz 1939

  • Four quadrangular scales in mutual contact represent the condition of definite phyllotaxis.

    The Genus Pinus George Russell Shaw 1892

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