phytomorph

English

Etymology

From phyto- +‎ -morph.

Noun

phytomorph (plural phytomorphs)

1. (rare) The representation of a plant in art.
   • 2018, Jules Janick, Arthur O. Tucker, Unraveling the Voynich Codex, Springer, →ISBN, page 144:

     The approach was to match proper names of identified phytomorphs with the names of plants in dialects of Nahuatl (Tucker and Talbert 2013).

2. (rare, botany) A specific morphology of a phytolith.
   • 1995, Salvatore A. Engel-Di Mauro, A Phytolith Analysis of Buried Soils in the Young Loess Sequence of Hungary:

     Interpretational Criteria During the initial stages of counting, it became apparent that some of the phytomorphs observed do not conform to established classification schemes.

3. (obsolete, paleontology) A hypothetical alga-like organism once thought to have had a symbiosis with some extinct fenestrid bryozoans, in an attempt to explain their unusual morphologies.
   • 1946, National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on a Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology, Report:

     Various features of the phytomorphs were illustrated, described, and discussed in some detail in the paper, and their similarity to various living algae were pointed out.