[f. FOOT sb. + STALK.] A slender stem or support fitted into a foot or base.
a. Bot. The stalk or petiole of a leaf; the peduncle of a flower.
1562. Turner, Herbal, II. 41. A footlyng or footstalcke such as chyries grow on.
1597. Gerard, Herball, II. xl. § 3. The flowers do growe betweene the footestalkes of those leaues.
1640. Parkinson, Theat. Bot., 1114. The flowers come forth at the joynts upon long footstalkes, small and many clustering together and after them small snaile-like shells a little rough.
1775. Romans, Hist. Florida, 27. Laurel, with a pointed leaf, blue berries sitting on long footstalks.
1849. Dana, Geol., App. i. 716. The footstalk into which the frond tapers is very long, quite equalling, in the young individual, the length of the frond, and probably not much shorter in the older frond.
b. Zoöl. A process resembling the petiole of a plant; e.g., the muscular attachment of a barnacle, the stalk of a crinoid, etc.
1826. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., IV. xliv. 214 Each egg is furnished with a footstalk terminating in a bulb, which is so deeply and firmly fixed that it is impossible to extract it without detaching a portion of the animal with it, and even when the caterpillar changes its skin it is not displaced.
1849. H. Miller, Footpr. Creat., iii. 30. The scale-like shagreen of the dog-fish is elevated over it on an osseous pedicle or footstalk, as a mushroom is elevated over the sword on its stem.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., v. (1878), 110. In some of the crabs the foot-stalk for the eye remains, though the eye is gone;—the stand for the telescope is there, though the telescope with its glasses has been lost.
c. gen.
1831. Brewster, Nat. Magic, viii. (1833), 194. We must stretch a thin sheet of wet paper, such as vegetable paper, over the mouth of a tumbler-glass with a footstalk, and fix it to the edges with glue.
1871. L. Stephen, Playgr. Europe, v. 122. Some of them [ice-pinnacles] rose in fantastic shapes—huge blocks balanced on narrow footstalks, and only waiting for the first touch of the sun to fall in ruins down the slope below.
Hence Foot-stalked a., attached by a footstalk.
1849–52. R. B. Todd, The Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, IV. 1185/1. They [Tunicata] are exclusively marine, and are widely spread from the arctic to the tropical seas. Sessile or foot-stalked on the rock, or incrusted seaweed and other bodies, their external form is seldom of graceful contour; yet the arrangement of the individuals in the compound masses often exhibits curious and elegant designs.
