Botanical Words Alphabetical List - CA
CACTUS: This is the common name for plants in the group, Cactaceae. All cacti are succulent, although not all succulents are cacti. Cacti can be distinguished from other succulents by their areoles, or pad-like buds, from which shoots, flowers, and spines grow. Areoles aren't always easily seen.
CAESPITOSE: Tufted; growing in small clumps.
CALCAREOUS SOIL: Soil containing carbonate of lime or limestone; chalky or limy.
CALCIUM: An element needed by plants. It can be added to the soil.
CALCIUM CARBONATE: A salt CaCo3 found in plant ashes, bones, shells, calcite and aragonite.
CALCIUM CHLORIDE: A deliquescent salt CaC12 used as a drying and dehumidifying agent.
CALCIUM CYANAMIDE: A compound CaCN2 used as a fertilizer and weed killer.
CALCIUM PHOSPHATE: 1 A phosphate used as a fertilizer. 2. A naturally occurring phosphate of calcium occurring as the main constituent of phosphate rock.
CALICHE: A term used to identify cemented deposits of calcium carbonate.
CALLUS: 1. Any unusually hard, thickened area or swelling on a plant, such as the thickening that is formed over wounds (such as the base of a cutting) by which the inner tissues are protected and healing is effected. 2. A waxy or fleshy protuberance, as on a labellum (of an Orchid).
CALYPTRA: A hood or covering on a flower or fruit. Also called calypter.
CALYPTRATE: Furnished with a calyptra, as a capsule or a flower; resembling a calyptra, as a calyx that comes off like a lid.
CALYPTROGEN: The cell layer from which the root cap originates.
CALYX: The outer part of a flower, usually small and green but sometimes showy and brightly colored; it is formed from the sepals and encloses the petals in a bud.
CAMBIUM: A layer of tissue, one cell thick, formed between the wood and the bark of vascular plants that is capable of developing new cells. On one side, cambium develops into a layer of new wood and on the other side, into bark. At the same time, new cambium is produced. This process happens every year and increases the size of the trunk, as indicated by its annual rings when wood is cut into a cross section.
CAMPANULATE: Bell-shaped.
CANE: A long and slender, jointed, rigid, woody stem that is hollow or pithy, such as some grasses and palms and rattan, bamboo and sugarcane; the stem of raspberries or blackberries.
CANESCENT: Growing white or gray; applied to plants with grayish-white, short, downy leaf hairs.
CANKER: A lesion or an oozing point of decay in the tissue of a plant, usually on the trunk or branches. Caused by wounds, disease, or insects.
CAPILLARY: 1. Water movement within the soil. 2. Water held by or found in the soil resulting from surface tension.
CAPILLARY ATTRACTION: Water moving against gravity and moving up to the soil's surface.
CAPILLARY MATTING: An interwoven fabric that wicks water from a reservoir. Used in propagators, seed flats, pots, or English baskets to provide plants with a constant supply of moisture.
CAPILLARY POROSITY: The volume of small pores in the soil that holds water.
CAPITATE: Head-like; collected in a dense cluster.
CAPITULUM: A dense head of flowers.
CAPSULE: A pod or seed vessel made of two or more cells, which becomes dry and splits open when mature to release its seeds.
CAPTAN: A man-made fungicide used to control many disease such as leaf spots and damping-off.
CARBARYL: A man-made insecticide that kills insects (even beneficial ones) on contact. It is very poisonous to bees. Commonly called Sevin.
CARBOHYDRATE: A compound containing carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.
CARBON: One of the most common chemical elements found in the soil and air that is needed by living plants.
CARBON DIOXIDE (Co2): A colorless gas found in the air.
CARBON-NITROGEN RATIO: The ratio of weight of organic carbon to the weight of nitrogen found in the soil.
CARPEL: A simple pistil, or one of several members composing a compound pistil or fruit. In other words, it is the organ of a plant that bears ovules.
CARPOGENIC: Fruit-producing. Also carpogenous.
CARPOPHORE: The wiry stalk that bears the carpels of some compound fruits.
CARUNCLE: An outgrowth surrounding the scar on a seed.
CARYOPSIS: A small, one-seeded, dry fruit in which the fruit and seed are incorporated into a single grain, as in wheat and all other cereal grains.
CATALASE: An enzyme capable of decomposing hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen.
CATALYST: Something that will increase the rate of a chemical reaction.
CATAPHYLL: These are the rudimentary leaves that precede a stage of growth. (such as the cotyledons of an embryo, the scale-like leaf of a rhizome, bud, or at the base of a stem).
CATCH CROP: A method of increasing garden productivity by filling in the empty spaces created when slower-growing vegetables are harvested with fast-growing crops. (i.e. green onions or radishes are grown in the space created when a broccoli plant is cut.
CATENA: The soil that is formed from similar parent materials but doesn't have like soil characteristics because of the differences in drainage or relief.
CATION: An ion that carries a positive charge of electricity like calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and hydrogen.
CATION EXCHANGE: The exchange of cations, held by a soil absorbing complex, with other cations.
CATION EXCHANGE CAPACITY: The measurement of the total amounts of exchangeable cations that can be held by the soil. Expressed as milliequivalents per 100 grams of soil.
CATKIN: A dense, scaly spike of flowers that fall after flowering or fruiting, as in the willow or birch; an ament.
CAUDATE: Having a tail-like appendage; a "tail" or narrowed, apical extension of some sepals and petals.
CAUDEX: The swollen water-storage tissue, usually consisting of both the root and stem of a succulent or woody plant.
CAUDICIFORM: Possessing a caudex; a plant with a swollen stem.
CAUDICLE: Extensions of tissue derived from the anther and connected to pollinia in many Orchids.
CAULESCENT: Having an obvious stem that grows above the soil's surface.
CAULOCARPOUS: Bearing a fruit repeatedly on the same stem; applied to plants that have perennial stems.
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