[f. SPERMATO- + -PHORE.]
1. Biol. In certain of the lower forms of animal life, a structure containing a compact mass of spermatozoa.
1847–9. Todd’s Cycl. Anat., IV. I. 485/1. These fibres in the Cephalopods are … surrounded … by peculiar sack-like enclosures or Spermatophores.
1870. Rolleston, Anim. Life, 108. A packet of spermatozoa, aggregated in their passage along the convolutions of the vasa deferentia into the so-called ‘spermatophore.’
1880. Huxley, Crayfish, 351. The filaments are in fact tubular spermatophores.
2. Bot. A part of the spermogonium of lichens or fungi, on which the spermatia are borne.
1861. Bentley, Man. Bot., 384. The spermagonium, when mature, has its interior filled with a number of bodies called spermatia … raised on stalks, termed spermatophores.
