Bot. [f. Gr. κόλλα glue + ἔγχυμα, ἐγχυματ- infusion.]
† 1. (See quots.) Obs.
1835. Lindley, Introd. Bot. (1848), I. 356. Link supposes the cellular substance in which pollen is generated to be semiorganic and calls it collenchyma.
1866. Treas. Bot., Collenchyma … usually absorbed, but remaining and assuming a definite form in some plants, as in orchids.
2. Tissue consisting of cells with walls greatly thickened at the angles, found just beneath the epidermis in the leaf-stalks and young stems of many Dicotyledons.
1857. Henfrey, Elem. Bot., 514. Collenchyma … has acquired a cartilaginous or horny texture by its cells becoming greatly thickened by secondary layers of a substance softening or swelling up in water.
1875. Bennett & Dyer, trans. Sachs’ Bot., I. ii. 83. The collenchyma originates from the fundamental tissue, and … not from the epidermis.
