(a.) Resembling chaff; composed of light dry scales.
(a.) Bearing or covered with dry scales, as the under surface of certain ferns, or the disk of some composite flowers.
Example Sentences:
Palea
Definition:
(n.) The interior chaff or husk of grasses.
(n.) One of the chaffy scales or bractlets growing on the receptacle of many compound flowers, as the Coreopsis, the sunflower, etc.
(n.) A pendulous process of the skin on the throat of a bird, as in the turkey; a dewlap.
Example Sentences:
(1) Treating the heavily cutinized anthoecial bracts (fertile lemma and palea) with 10% NaOH results in the removal of sufficient cuticle to allow examination of the cells of the epidermis.
(2) The flagellate stage of the rumen phycomycete Neocallimastix frontalis invades and germinates on plant material in the rumen and in vitro, preferentially invading the lemmas, paleas, awns and flower bracts in members of the plant family Gramineae, and flower bracts in certain of the Papilionaceae.