Pycniospore

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small asexual spore formed within a pycnium during the aecial stage of rust fungi reproduction
2. One of many minute spores generated in a flask-shaped fruiting body called a pycnium in rust fungi
3. A spore produced in the pycnium of rust fungi that may serve in fertilization before the formation of aecial spores

Etymology: Pycniospore is a technical coinage from mycology, the study of fungi, built from two Greek roots. "Pyknos" meant "dense" or "compact," and "spora" meant "seed" or "spore," so the word describes a small, tightly packed spore. The term belongs to the vocabulary that botanists and mycologists developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name the different kinds of spores produced by fungi, many of which had no common-language names at all. The "pycni-" element refers to pycnidia, small flask-shaped fruiting bodies that certain fungi form, often embedded in plant tissue. The spores produced inside these structures are the pycniospores. Mycologists used the prefix to separate them from other spore types produced at different stages of a fungus's life cycle, so the name records where the spore is made rather than how it looks.