Glossary

Category: S

  • Slash

    A cut with a sharp instrument (e.g. panga, parang, machete or bush knife) inflicted on the trunk of a tree, which may give additional characters for identification (latex, colour of underbark etc.) A long cut with a knife.  

  • Skeleton

    Skeleton

    Structure that remains after an organ has been destroyed by rotting, erosion or corrosion. The framework that supports the soft tissues of vertebrate animals and protects many of their internal organs. The skeletons of vertebrates are made of bone and/or cartilage. The framework of the body consisting of the bones. In humans, there are 206…

  • Sister species

    Two species resulting from a single speciation event.  

  • Sister groups

    (In phylogenetics) two groups of species that are each others closest relatives, i.e. traceable to a single dichotomy.  

  • Siphonostelic

    (Of a stele) with a central column of pith surrounded by a hollow vascular cylinder of xylem and phloem.  

  • Sinuous

    Wavy.  

  • Sinuate

    With an uneven margin that has rather deep rounded sinusoidal undulations. Said of a leaf when its margin waves out and in. (Of gills) Notched gills in which the gill edge becomes abruptly concave as it meets the stem, attached but leaving an obvious channel around the stem.  

  • Sinker

    Shoot growing downwards from a bulb or corm and producing a new bulb or corm at its apex; (In parasitic plants) an outgrowth of the haustorium that grows into the tissues of the host plant.  

  • Sinistrorse

    Towards the left (when viewed from the front) (e.g. in climbing stems).  

  • Sine loc

    From the Latin sine loco, ‘without a place’; used for a herbarium specimen without locality information.