meristem

See also: Meristem

English

From German Meristem, from Ancient Greek μεριστός (meristós, “divided”), from μερίζω (merízō), from μέρος (méros) +‎ στέμμα (stémma, “wreath, garland”). First used in 1858 by Swiss botanist Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli (1817–1891).^[1]

meristem (plural meristems)

(botany) The plant tissue composed of totipotent cells that allows plant growth.
Coordinate term: cambium
- 2020, Janet Chernela, quotee, “Life Finds A Way”, in Jonathan Elmore, editor, Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN:
  By looking back at a past populated by beings of grotesque difference, humans could place themselves at the apical meristem—the growing tip—of the future.

zone of active cell division

^ Carl Nägeli (1858) “Ueber das Wachsthum des Stammes und der Wurzel bei den Gefässpflanzen”, in Beiträge zur Wissenschaftlichen Botanik [Contributions to Scientific Botany] (in German), page 2: “[S]o giebt es auch hauptspächlich zwei Arten von Theilungsgewebe. Das Eine ist dasjenige, woraus anfänglich das ganze Organ besteht, und das oft auch noch späterhin, zuweilen zeitlebens thätig ist; ich will es Meristem nennen.”

Borrowed from French méristème.

meristem n (plural meristeme)

Declension of **meristem**
	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
	singular		plural
nominative-accusative	meristem	meristemul	meristeme	meristemele
genitive-dative	meristem	meristemului	meristeme	meristemelor
vocative	meristemule		meristemelor