Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Monocotyledon
/ˌmɒnoʊkɒtɪˈliːdən/noun
A flowering plant whose seedling comes up with a single seed leaf, such as a grass, palm or orchid.
The Greek roots
μόνος
mónos
single, alone
κοτυληδών
kotylēdṓn
cup-shaped hollow, seed leaf
Literally: “one seed leaf”
The story of the word
John Ray drew the line in the 1680s, before Linnaeus made it a formal rank: some seedlings push up one blade, others two. The single blade turns out to predict a great deal about the adult plant, which will usually have parallel veins, flower parts in threes and no true growth rings. Every grain that feeds the world is a monocotyledon, which is a large amount of civilisation resting on one seed leaf.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
cotyledondicotyledonmonologuemonopoly
In a sentence
Maize is a monocotyledon, so the seedling comes up as one spear rather than two leaves.
You can usually sort a monocotyledon from a dicot at a glance, by the veins.