microphyll

/ ˈmaɪkrəʊfɪl /

noun

1. botany the relatively small type of leaf produced by club mosses and horsetails Compare megaphyll

microphyll

/ mī′krə-fĭl′ /

1. A leaf with only one vascular bundle and no complex network of veins. Horsetails and lycophytes (such as club mosses) have microphylls. Microphylls on modern plants are generally small but in extinct phyla the same structures could grow quite large. In contrast to megaphylls, microphylls are thought to have evolved from modifications of a single stem.

Example Sentences

In a September letter, a coalition including the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club criticized the Bureau of Land Management for proposing an exemption to the desert plan that would allow the project’s developer to destroy a few dozen acres of microphyll woodlands, where ironwood and palo verde trees grow along ephemeral streams that flow during monsoons, nourishing mammals and migrating birds.

From Los Angeles Times

One charge is that some of the renewable-energy zones overlap with ecologically sensitive areas, such as sand dunes that are home to the Mojave fringe-toed lizard and “microphyll woodlands,” areas of taller trees, such as ironwood and palo verde, that are key for birds.

From Washington Post