arbuscle

Noun

arbuscle (plural arbuscles)

1. A plant midway in height between a shrub and a tree; a dwarf tree.
   • Gumme is an Arabick word, and when it is put abſolutely; it muſt be underſtood of Gum-Arabick, which Galen calls Thebane, ſome Babylonian, and others Acanthine Gumme. It flowes from a certain arbuſcle, which [Pedanius] Dioſcorides calls Acacia, whereof he conſtitutes two ſorts […]1657, "Renodæus" [Jean de Renou], translated by Richard Tomlinson, A Medicinal Dispensatory, containing the VVhole Body of Physick: Discovering the Natures, Properties, and Vertues of Vegetables...
   • Ar′boret or arbus′cle. A little tree.1853, F[rederick] Knighton, The American Etymological School Grammar, containing Copious Exercises, and a Systematic View of the Formation and Derivation of Words, from the Anglo-Saxon, Latin and...
2. A branched hypha in some fungi.
   • The hyphae of the arbuscle, which are finely ramified and form a floccose mass, soon lose their individuality and make a structureless granular and gummy conglomeration […]1956, Phytomorphology, Delhi: International Society of Plant Morphologists, →OCLC, page 71
3. The site at which a symbiotic fungus attaches to the roots of a plant and exchanges nutrients, etc., with it.
   • Detailed view of a typical fine endophyte arbuscle in the inner cortex. Note the well preserved structural integrity of the endophyte and the characteristic bifurcate hyphae […]. Infection was with the fine endophyte Glomus tenuis […].1979, New Zealand Journal of Botany, Wellington: Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, →OCLC, page 57
   • The arbuscle formation increases the metabolic activity of the host cell which is mainly due to the bidirectional transfer of metabolites and nutrients to and from the fungus. Arbuscles live for only 4–15 days. They degenerate and are digested by the host cell […].1991, Ewald Sieverding, edited by Kathryn Mulhern, Vesicular-arbuscular Mycorrhiza Management in Tropical Agrosystems [Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit; 224]...
4. A clump of feather-like cilia (hairlike structures).