Bot. [a. mod.Fr. anthère, and mod.L. anthēra, in cl.L. ‘a medicine extracted from flowers,’ a. Gr. ἀνθηρά, fem. of ἀνθηρός flowery, f. ἀνθε- (ἄνθος) flower. As these medicines often consisted of the internal organs of flowers (e.g., saffron, one of the chief anthēræ, was the stigma), the name anthēra was specially applied by the early pharmacists to these parts, and at length confined by the herbalists, c. 1700, to the pollen-bearing organ, known to earlier writers as thēca, capsula, or apex; which use was accepted and sanctioned by Linnæus. The following quotations illustrate these changes:
1551. Turner, Herbal, II. 116. (from Dioscor.) [Dried rose petals] are mingled with medicines called anthera and preservatiue medicines for woundes. But the floure that is founde in the middes of the rose is good agaynst the reume or flowing of the gummes.
1657. Phys. Dict., Anthera, a compound medicine used for sore mouths. So in Phillips 1678–96; ed. 1706 adds, Anthera, the yellow seeds in the middle of a Rose…. Among Herbalists Antheræ are taken for those little knobs that grow on the top of the Stamina of Flowers, and are oftner call’d Apices.
1727–51. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., Anthera in pharmacy, a term used by some authors for the yellow, or ruddy globules in the middle of certain flowers, as of lilies, saffron, etc. Some confine the Anthera to the yellowish globules in the middle of roses. Other apply the name Antheræ to those little tufts or knobs which grow on the tops of the stamina of flowers; more usually called apices.]
That part of the stamen containing the pollen or fertilizing dust, which when mature is shed forth for the fertilization of the ovary; it is often supported on a slender pedicel called the filament.
1706–51. [See above].
1759. B. Stillingfleet, in Misc. Tracts, Introd. (1762), 31. This anthera contains the male dust, which when ripe is scattered about by every breath of air.
1791. E. Darwin, Bot. Gard., I. 197. The bursting Anthers trust To the mild breezes their prolific dust.
1813. Sir H. Davy, Agric. Chem., 68. The essential part of the stamens are the summits or anthers.
1874. Lubbock, Wild Flowers (1875), iii. 50. In the Buttercup (Ranunculus acris), the anthers commence to discharge their pollen, as soon as the flower opens, beginning from the outside.
b. Comb. and Attrib., as anther-beak, -cell, -lobe; anther-dust, pollen; anther-valve, the opening by which the pollen is shed.
1870. Hooker, Stud. Flora, 356. Ophrys apifera … anther-beak hooked. Ibid., 285. Salvia … connective slender, bearing at one end a perfect anther-cell.
1875. trans. Sachs’ Bot., 473. The anther consists of two longitudinal halves (anther-lobes).
1845. Lindley, Sch. Bot., iv. (1858), 25. Flowers regular, with recurved anther-valves.
