cleistogamy

noun

cleis·​tog·​a·​my

variants or less commonly clistogamy

klī-ˈstä-gə-mē 

plural -es

: the production (as in violets and pansies) of small inconspicuous nonopening self-pollinating flowers additional to and often bearing more seeds than the showier type compare chasmogamy

Word History

Etymology

cleisto- + -gamy, after German Cleistogamismus

Note: The German noun Cleistogamismus and the adjectival form cleistogam were introduced by the botanist Max (Friedrich Adalbert Maximilian) Kuhn (1842-94) in "Einige Bemerkungen über Vandellia und den Blüthenpolymorphismus," Botanische Zeitung, 25. Jahrgang, No. 9 (1. März 1867), pp. 65-66. Kuhn accounted for the term as follows: "Was den Namen monoicodimorph und Monoicodimorphismus anbetrifft, so erscheint er, obgleich von Darwin als dem Begründer aller jener Untersuchungen eingeführt und daher schwer wieder aus der Literatur zu eliminiren, bei dem wachsenden Materiale für viele Fälle so unzweckmässig, dass ich statt dessen den zutreffenden Namen—Cleistogamismus und flores cleistogami vorschlagen möchte." ("As far as the names monoicodimorphic and monoicodimorphism are concerned: though introduced by Darwin as the founder of all these investigations and thus difficult to remove from the literature, they appear so inappropriate in many cases in view of the increasing material, that I would like to suggest the [more] accurate names cleistogamy and cleistogamic flowers.") There is no record that Darwin ever used the terms that Kuhn attributed to him, however, or that anyone other than Kuhn himself used them.

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