Surf Wiki
Save to docs
general/plant-morphology

From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Merosity

Metric in plant morphology

Metric in plant morphology

Merosity (from the greek "méros," which means "having parts") refers to the number of component parts in a distinct whorl of a plant structure. The term is most commonly used in the context of a flower where it refers to the number of sepals in a whorl of the calyx, the number of petals in a whorl of the corolla, the number of stamens in a whorl of the androecium, or the number of carpels in a whorl of the gynoecium. The term may also be used to refer to the number of leaves in a leaf whorl.

NounAdjective
2 partsdimery
3 partstrimery
4 partstetramery
5 partspentamery
many partspolymery
few partsoligomery

The adjective n-merous refers to a whorl of n parts, where n is any integer greater than one.

In nature, five or three parts per whorl have the highest frequency of occurrence, but four or two parts per whorl are not uncommon. Two consecutive whorls of dimerous petals are often mistaken for tetramerous petals.

If all of the whorls in a given floral arrangement have the same merosity, the flower is said to be isomerous, otherwise the flower is anisomerous. For example, Trillium is isomerous since all whorls are trimerous (one whorl of three sepals, zero or one whorl of three petals, two whorls of three stamens each, and one whorl of three carpels). Trillium also has one whorl of three leaves.

NounAdjective
equal partsisomery
unequal partsanisomery

References

References

  1. (1994). "Merosity in flowers: definition, origin, and taxonomic significance". Plant Systematics and Evolution.
  2. "A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin".
Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

plant-morphology
Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Merosity — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report