calyces

Noun

calyx (plural calyces or calyxes)

1. The outermost whorl of flower parts, comprising the sepals, which covers and protects the petals as they develop.
   • Black crowberry. Empetrum nigrum. Crowberry Family. Fruit. — The black drupe is berrylike, globular, and incloses six to nine seedlike nutlets with a seed in each. The calyx is at the base and the stigma is at the apex. The drupes are solitary in the leaf axils. They are juicy, acid, edible, and...1905, Maude Gridley Peterson, How to Know Wild Fruits: A Guide to Plants When Not in Flower by Means of Fruit and Leaf, Macmillan, page 202
2. A chamber in the mammalian kidney through which urine passes.
3. The crown containing the viscera of crinoids and similar echinoderms, entoprocts, and the polyps of some cnidarians.
4. A funnel-shaped expansion of the vas deferens or oviduct of insects.
5. A flattened cap of neuropil in the brain of insects.