Acrogens

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Vascular plants that grow by adding tissue at their tips, including ferns, horsetails and club mosses, which reproduce without seeds
2. Non-flowering plants whose growth comes from a terminal point rather than a central trunk, a group that includes many ferns and related species
3. Plants belonging to an older botanical category defined by apical growth, such as ferns, lycopods and mosses that spread by spores

Etymology: Acrogens are plants whose growth comes from the tip of the stem, so the word is built from two Greek-derived parts: "akros", meaning "highest" or "extreme", and the suffix "-gen", from Greek "-genes", meaning "producing" or "born of." Put together, they describe organisms that grow from the top end. The term is a technical coinage from classical roots rather than a word used by the ancient Greeks themselves. The plural form simply names more than one such plant. Ferns and their relatives are the classic examples of this kind of growth, which contrasts with plants that add length from lower, intercalary zones of the stem.