Dialycarpic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Describing a flower whose pistil is made of several carpels that remain separate from one another
2. Used of a plant or flower in which the individual carpels are free and not fused together
3. Referring to a gynoecium composed of distinct, unfused carpels, as found in many buttercups and roses

Etymology: "Dialycarpic" describes a flower or fruit whose carpels, the units that make up a pistil, are separate from one another rather than fused together. The word is built from the Ancient Greek "dialúō," meaning "to separate" or "to loosen apart," combined with "-carpic," from the Greek "karpós," meaning "fruit," a suffix botanists use for fruit-related terms. Each part of the word therefore describes the same idea: the fruit parts come apart. The term belongs to a family of botanical words built on the same "dialy-" prefix. Its close relatives, "dialypetalous" and "dialyneury," describe petals that stay unfused and leaf veins that run separately, so a botanist who knows one of these can read the others at a glance. Such coinages are technical descriptions made from classical roots, not words that existed in ancient Greek.

Synonyms: dialycarpous

Antonyms: syncarpous