fructal

English

Etymology

From Latin frūctus +‎ -al.

Adjective

fructal

1. (rare) Of or relating to fruit.

   Synonym: (rare) fruital

   • 1866, Mrs. [William] Bayle Bernard, “The Date”, in Our Common Fruits. A Descriptive Account of Those Ordinarily Cultivated Or Consumed in Great Britain., London: Frederick Warne and Co., […], page 94:

     Even after the mild breath of spring has begun to kindle a light of blossoms on our boughs, in the gradual progression of our seasons, yet a long time must elapse ere summer’s warmer smile shall have ripened the flowers into fruit: while awaiting her slow coming, we are glad to avail ourselves occasionally of any fructal variety afforded by the produce of other lands, and thus the dessert can hardly fail sometimes to include a treasure from the East, which introduces us to a class of vegetation altogether different from our own.

   • 1924, Ivan Murray Johnston, The Botany (The Vascular Plants), California Academy of Sciences, page 1044:

     It is characterized by its erect, shrubby habit, silvery pubescence, large flowers, narrow leaflets, and manner of fructal dehiscence.

   • 1960, American Journal of Botany, volume 47, page 316, column 1:

     A few potted individuals, on being transferred to the greenhouse, came into flower in December and January, but (after artificial pollination) differed insignificantly in floral, fructal, and seminal details from the characters listed by Brenan for C. obtusifolia.

   • 1964, Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden, volume 12, page 98:

     Since fructal characters are required for certain determination, exsiccatae lacking fruit but otherwise agreeing with this taxon will be indicated with an asterisk (*).

   • 1992, Lisa Baumann, “To Bee or Not to Bee”, in Nancy Jones, editor, Voices from Within, University of North Texas Press, →ISBN, page 12:

     Plunge, suddenize, ecstacize / Upon the pure honeys of language / Roll about and in, absorbing adjectives / That only a queen knew to bestow / We, her loyal servants / Implant the fructal message / Into all the hungry minds / Instill the experience in, / The growth from, / The love of / Wordzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

   • 1996, Dale Ordway Evans, editor, International Workshop on the Genus Calliandra, Winrock International, page 42:

     The study aimed to investigate the reproductive biology of the species with the objectives of (1) identifying floral visitors that are effective pollinators, (2) determining the variation in floral and fructal phenology within and between provenances, and (3) assessing the success of intra- and inter-provenance controlled crosses and the extent of selfing.

   • 2007, Jackie M. Poole, William R. Carr, Dana M. Price, Jason R. Singhurst, Rare Plants of Texas, Texas A&M University Press, →ISBN, page 143, column 2:

     Line drawings of a stem fragment and floral/fructal parts appear in Wheeler (1941) as Euphorbia fendleri var. triligulata.

   • 2011, Simon C. Estok, Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN:

     Anthony J. Lewis is surely correct in arguing that “the identification of people with food [in Pericles is] the reduction of human beings to comestibles” (155), but it is also a “reduction” of human beings to the natural world, a “reduction” that overlooks differences between people on the one hand and floral or faunal commodities on the other, and if we see this implied in Othello, we see it explicit in Pericles, where we hear of young women—at the age of fourteen!—being “ripe for marriage” (4.Gower.17); where we hear of the daughter of King Antiochus, unnamed in Pericles, being described as a fructal commodity, a precious “fruit of yon celestial tree” (1.i.21), “a golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched” (l.28); […]

   • 2014, Mark Greene, Fruitfulness on the Frontline, Inter-Varsity Press, →ISBN:

     Indeed, there is no evidence that one type of fruit is more important to God than another, no evidence of a ‘fructal hierarchy’, as if speaking up for justice might be more important than modelling godly character, or making good work more important than moulding culture.

   • 2021, Adam Roberts, Middlemarch: Epigraphs and Mirrors, Open Book Publishers, →ISBN:

     Farebrother takes the apple, but Fred, Mary’s old playfellow, gets the girl. And when Fred calls, later in the novel, to plight his troth, it will not surprise us that he encounters the Garths, ‘the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great apple-tree in the orchard’. Eliot provides us with one last twist on this fructal theme.