Formerly in L. form corymbus, pl. -i. [a. F. corymbe, ad. L. corymbus, a. Gr. κόρυμβος head, top, cluster of fruit or flowers, esp. of ivy-berries; with Pliny, also the capitulum or close head of a composite flower.]
1. Bot. A species of inflorescence; a raceme in which the lower flower-stalks are proportionally longer, so that the flowers are nearly on a level, forming a fat or slightly convex head.
By writers before the time of Linnæus, corymbus was applied to the discoidal head of a composite flower: see Ray, Hist. Plants (1686), I. 11.
[1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Corymbus … among Modern Herbalists, is us’d for a compounded discous Flower, whose Seeds are not Pappous, or do not fly away in Down.]
1776. Withering, Brit. Plants (1796), III. 567. Lepidium petræum … Flowers in a close corymbus.
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., xxvi. 393. The purple corymbs of the Asters.
1835. Lindley, Introd. Bot. (1848), I. 321. The modern corymb must not be confounded with that of Pliny, which was analogous to our capitulum.
1861. Mrs. Lankester, Wild Flowers, 75. Sea Aster … The flower-heads are in a compact corymb.
b. transf. (Zool.) Used of a group of zoophytes.
1846. Dana, Zooph. (1848), 173. A whole corymb or hemispherical group.
¶ 2. A cluster of ivy-berries or grapes. (Not an Eng. sense.)
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Corymbus, a Bunch, or Cluster of Ivy-berries.
1849. De Quincey, Eng. Mail-Coach, Wks. IV. 347. Gorgeous corymbi from vintages.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, xii. 408. Ivy-branches … surround its [a mirror’s] rim with a delicate tracery of sharp-cut leaf and corymb.
