rootstockn.
/ˈruːtstɒk/, U.S. /ˈrutˌstɑk/, /ˈrʊtˌstɑk/ 1.
a. Botany. A main root or underground stem; a rhizome; esp. a short upright underground stem from which new leaves and shoots are produced annually; (now rare) a creeping stem.
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the world > plants > part of plant > root > [noun] > rhizome
rootstock1803
rhizoma1811
stock1831
rhizome1833
rootage1855
1803 Curtis's Bot. Mag. 18 663 Bulb clothed by several concentric wiry-fibrous tunics sitting on a rootstock that is convex and very smooth beneath, above which and from its base the fibres are radiately extruded.
1832 Useful & Ornamental Planting (Libr. Useful Knowl.) 132 Fourteen large trees, growing from the same root-stock.
1861 P. Lankester Wild Flowers 43 The Large-flowered Hypericum, or St. John's Wort,..has a creeping, woody rootstock.
1877 F. G. Heath Fern World 21 The lower leafy portion of the frond almost touches the crown of the root-stock.
1914 F. E. Fritsch & E. J. Salisbury Introd. Study Plants xii. 156 In many plants a portion of the stem is situated beneath the surface of the soil, such underground stems when they creep horizontally being termed rhizomes, whilst the short more or less erect structures seen in the Buttercup, Primrose and Wood Sanicle are known as root-stocks.
1945 A. B. Jackson Step's Wayside & Woodland Ferns (new. ed.) 105 The Moonwort..has a small tuberous rootstock, with thick fleshy roots.
1988 Garden Dec. 579/2 Its pithy stems normally die down each winter to a woody rootstock from whence new shoots emerge in spring.
2007 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) June 173/2 Wasabi, like horseradish, is a rootstock of the mustard family, but there is a world of difference between them.
b. Horticulture. A stock on to which another variety has been grafted or budded.
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the world > food and drink > farming > gardening > management of plants > propagation of plants > [noun] > grafting > rootstock
graff-stockc1503
stub1587
graftlinga1618
gribblea1641
free stock1658
rootstock1867
understock1937
1867 T. H. Hyatt Hyatt's Handbk. Grape Culture vi. 104 Insert the scion into the upper end of this root stock.
1933 H. H. Thomas Pop. Encycl. Gardening 392/1 The shoot of the required variety is united with a suitable rootstock or with a branch of an established tree of the same kind.
1969 P. Thrower Every Day Gardening iv. 84/2 I keep a close lookout throughout the season for suckers growing from the roots below the union of the rose and the rootstock.
2007 Park Home & Holiday Caravan Jan. 58/3 The secret is to choose a small tree on a very dwarfing rootstock that you can grow in a pot, or choose one trained as a cordon or espalier.
2. figurative. A primary form or source from which offshoots have arisen.
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the world > existence and causation > causation > source or origin > [noun] > source or primitive or original form
germc1550
stocka1625
seediness1662
primordium1704
germen1794
root form1832
rootstock1862
1862 R. Hatch Bible Servitude Re-examined ix. 91 The living power of this root-stock of godliness and justice kept idolatry and slavery out of the great Patriarch's own household.
1877 J. W. Dawson Origin of World xiii. 272 The Egyptians being.., if languages have one origin, likely to be near its root-stock.
1888 E. Clodd Story of Creation (1894) 128 Whether there was an ancestral form or rootstock from which both reptile and mammal branched off..is not clear.
1920 H. G. Wells Outl. Hist. xxxi. 308/2 They were a most fruitful rootstock of heresies throughout the entire Christian world for nearly a thousand years.
1941 Symp. Hydrobiol. 3 Hydrobiology is an offshoot from the old maternal rootstock of natural history.
2001 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 20 Sept. 73/3 The greater schoolmasters of the early Renaissance..protected their charges from vice while grafting humanist learning onto the rootstock of Christian morals.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, November 2010; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
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n.1803