from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- adj. Having the sepals united or partly united.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- adj. (of a calyx) having united sepals
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- adj. Formed of united sepals; monosepalous.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In botany, having the sepals united; monosepalous.
The normal coloration of the calyx occurs most frequently in polysepalous calyces; teratological coloration, on the other hand, occurs especially in gamosepalous flowers.
Under normal circumstances it will be found that laminar venation is most common in gamosepalous and vaginal venation in polysepalous calyces.
Dialysis of the sepals in calyces that are usually gamosepalous has been most frequently observed in _Rosaceæ_, _Pomaceæ_, _Umbelliferæ_, less commonly in _Leguminosæ_, also in the following genera: -- _Primula_,
Following Augustin Pyranius De Candolle, botanists have applied the term cohesion to the coalescence of parts of the same organ or of members of the same whorl; for instance, to the union of the sepals in a gamosepalous calyx, or of the petals in a gamopetalous corolla.
= Cohesion of the sepals = in a normally polypetalous calyx renders the latter gamosepalous, and is not of uncommon occurrence, to a partial extent, though rarely met with complete.
This statement would be more fully verified were it possible to state the frequency with which the condition occurred in _individual plants_, when it would be found that phyllody of the calyx occurs much more often in individual gamosepalous plants than in polysepalous ones.
When this change happens in the calyx we have the gamosepalous condition replaced by the polysepalous one, as thus represented:
Calyx gamosepalous, dividing unequally when the flower opens.