a. Bot. [f. as prec., after scissile, L. scissilis.] Name for a form of dehiscence in which the seed-vessel (pyxidium) opens by a transverse circular line, so that the upper part comes off like a lid.
1835. Lindley, Introd. Bot. (1848), II. 5. Of valvular dehiscence, there is a very anomalous mode … called circumscissile.
1857. Henfrey, Bot., § 317. The fruit [of Mosses] is an urn-shaped capsule, which mostly opens by a circumscissile dehiscence.
1881. in Syd. Soc. Lex.
