Seminule

Seminules appear to differ only from seeds by their minuteness. […] The seminules of cryptogamous plants are produced in ovaries to which stigmas are attached; but those of agamous plants are contained in a sort of ovary, to which no stigma being attached, they are disginguished by the peculiar name of conceptacles, either loose, or, as in some plants, in small cases called elytræ, the conceptacle itself then performing the office of an involucrum.

Germination of its seminule, as observed by Hedwig, very much magnified; showing the seminule throwing out a radicle, and a succulent thread, considered as a cotyledon, which appears to be jointed, and having nipples which elongate into branches.

It was generally believed, before the experiments made by M. Kuhn, but without any foundation, and upon simple conjecture, that the seminules or spores of the ustilagoes and uredoes of the cereals penetrate by the radicles of the plant in order to arrive, creeping by degrees, to the leaves and seeds of those vegetables.