Definition of "caducous" []

• Dropping off or shedding at an early stage of development, as the gills of most amphibians or the sepals or stipules of certain plants. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "As “cloud racks up” above the lake, the poem racks up definitions for oligotrophic, eutrophic, caducous, absyssal, meanings for Toronto and Ontario."
• "The first and the second glumes are unequal, persistent or separately caducous."
• "The _spikelets_ are small, 1/20 to 1/16 inch subsessile or pedicelled, always appressed to the rachis solitary in the upper portions of the branches, and two to five on the branchlets in the lower portion, pale, green or rarely copper coloured, oblong or lanceolate, acute or acuminate, caducous or glumes one and two persistent."