[ad. mod.L. spora, a. Gr. σπορά sowing, seed, So F. spore, It. spora.]
1. Bot. One of the minute reproductive bodies characteristic of flowerless plants.
1836. Berkeley, in Smith’s Eng. Flora, V. II. 341. Fertile branchlets … bearing quaternate spores.
1839. Lindley, Introd. Bot. (ed. 3), 260. The sporangia burst … and emit minute particles named spores or sporules, from which new plants are produced.
1863. M. J. Berkeley, Brit. Mosses, i. 2. The cellular product of the germinating spores … in Mosses consists of more or less branched threads.
1889. Science-Gossip, XXV. 185. Causing the peristome … to open…, disclosing the interior of the capsule with its beautiful golden spores.
fig. 1862. O. W. Holmes, Old Vol. of Life (1891), 46. The spores of a great many ideas are floating about in the atmosphere.
2. Zool. and Biol. A very minute germ or organism.
1876. trans. Wagner’s Gen. Pathol., 85. The latter represent the cells, which are the germs of new individuals (spores, etc.).
1888. Rolleston & Jackson, Anim. Life, 859. The contained protoplasm gives origin to a single spore … or to a large number.
3. a. attrib., as spore-capsule, -cell, -dot, -fruit, -germ, -sac, -theca, -wall.
Also spore-bud, -cyst, -formation, -membrane, etc.
1856. W. L. Lindsey, Hist. Brit. Lichens, 69. The spore-wall varies in thickness.
1857. Henfrey, Bot., 154. The fruits consist of capsules of globular or oval form (sporocarps, or spore-fruits). Ibid., 168. The larger (spore-sacs), containing the spore-germs.
1866. Treas. Bot., 978/1. The spores are formed in a joint or joints of the spore-threads.
1882. Vines, trans. Sachs’ Bot., 233. The entire spore-capsule of a Moss. Ibid., 437. The mother-cell splitting up into four spore-cells.
1885. Goodale, Physiol. Bot. (1892), 164. The formation in ferns of the sori, or spore-dots.
b. Comb., as spore-bearing, -forming, -producing.
1857. T. Moore, Handbk. Brit. Ferns (ed. 3), 10. The involute … segments of the spore-bearing leaf.
1880. Bessey, Botany, 319. Little lateral branches budding out upon the spore-forming hyphæ.
1882. Vines, trans. Sachs’ Bot., 387. In many cases … the spore-producing generation attains great dimensions.
