Caulis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A stem or stalk of a plant that supports leaves, flowers, and fruit
2. specifically referring to the main axis of a plant in botanical terms
3. the part of a plant that connects roots to leaves and carries nutrients through its vascular system

Etymology: Latin "caulis" meant the stalk or stem of a plant, and in Roman usage it was also the word for a cabbage, the plant whose thick stalk gave the name its strongest association. English took the word directly from Latin as a learned borrowing, so it arrived as a technical term rather than through everyday speech. Its sibling words tell a different story: "cole," "kale," and "gobi" all descend from the same Latin root but reached English by more ordinary routes, which makes "caulis" a doublet of them, the same ancestor surfacing twice under different circumstances. In botany the word has narrowed to a precise meaning, the main axis or central stem from which leaves and branches grow. Its use in that sense reflects the Latin focus on the stalk as the defining part of the plant, while the cabbage sense has faded from the technical vocabulary.

Synonyms: stem, stalk, shoot, branch, trunk