ovule

• WordNet 3.6
  • n ovule a small or immature ovum
  • n ovule a small body that contains the female germ cell of a plant; develops into a seed after fertilization
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• Interesting fact: A woman's sense of smell is most sensitive during ovulation.
• • n Ovule (Biol) The rudiment of a seed. It grows from a placenta, and consists of a soft nucleus within two delicate coatings. The attached base of the ovule is the hilum, the coatings are united with the nucleus at the chalaza, and their minute orifice is the foramen.
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• • n ovule A. little egg: specifically, in anat., physiol., and zoology, an ovulum or ovum, especially a small one, as that of a mammal, or one not yet matured and discharged from the ovary: specifically applied by Haeckel to the ovum or fertilizable but unfertilized egg-cell of the female, conformable with the use of spermule for the male sperm-cell. Its protoplasm is termed by him ovoplasm, and its nucleus ovococcus.
  • n ovule In botany, a young or rudimentary seed; a peculiar outgrowth or production of the carpel which, upon fertilization and the formation of an embryo within, becomes the seed. In the angiospermous gynœcium the ovules are normally produced along the margins, or some partof the margins, of the carpellary leaf, either immediately or by the intermediation of a placenta, which is a more or less evident development of the leaf-margins for the support of the ovules. Rarely ovules are developed from the whole internal surface of the ovary, or from various parts of it, in no definite order, directly from the walls, and without the intervention of anything which can be regarded as a placenta. In gymnosperms the ovules are borne on the face of the carpellary scale or at its base; or on metamorphosed leaf-margins, as in Cyeas; or, when there is no representative of the carpel, on the cauline axis, seemingly as a direct growth of it. (Gray.) The only essential part of the ovule is its nucleus, or nucellus, as it has been termed recently, which is usually invested by one or two coats, the primine. and secundine. The coats are sacs with a narrow orifice called the foramen, the closed vestige of which becomes the micropyle in the seed. The proper base of the ovule is the chalaza, and it may be either sessile or on a stalk (funiculus) of its own. The hilum is the scar left when the seed is detached from its funiculus. As to shape. ovules may be orthotropous, campylotropous, amphitropous, or anatropous: and as to position in the ovary, they may be erect, ascending, horizontal, pendulous, or suspended. In regard to numbers, they may be solitary, few, or indefinitely numerous, See cuts under accumbent, anatropous, funicle, magnolia, orthotrop?us, and ovary.
  • n ovule Some small body like or likened to an ovule: as, an ovule of Naboth. See ovulum.
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• • n Ovule ōv′ūl a little egg: the seed of a plant in its rudimentary state, growing from the placenta
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