noun
definition
The bristle or beard of barley, oats, grasses, etc., or any similar bristlelike appendage; arista.
Examples of awn in a Sentence
The wild oat, moreover, has a long stiff awn, usually twisted near the base.
The awn is also of use in burying the fruit in the soil.
Valuable characters for distinguishing genera are obtained from the awn.
When terminal the awn has three fibro-vascular bundles, when dorsal only one; it is covered with stomate-bearing epidermis.
The pair of barren glumes (b) are separated from the flowering glume, which bears a long awn, twisted below the knee and feathery above.
Fertile glumes generally longer than the empty, unawned or with a straight, terminal awn.
The outer glumes are acute and glabrous, the flowering glumes lance-shaped, with a comb-like keel at the back, and the outer or lower one prolonged at the apex into a very long bristly awn.
Each flower consists of an outer or lower glume, called the flowering glume, of the same shape as the empty glume and terminating in a long, or it may be in a short, awn or "beard."
On pages 4 and 5 we describe a method for studying the remarkable hygroscopic awn of wild oat seeds.
I), the flowering glume having its dorsal rib prolonged into an awn (fig.
The long awn, which is bent and closely twisted below the bend, acts as a driving organ; it isvery hygroscopic, the coils untwisting when damp and twisting up when dry.
The repeated twisting and untwisting, especially when the upper part of the awn has become fixed in the earth or caught in surrounding vegetation, drives the point deeper and deeper into the ground.