CAPILLARY, adjective

1. Resembling a hair, fine, minute, small in diameter, though long; as a capillary tube or pipe; a capillary vessel in animal bodies, such as the ramifications of the blood vessels.

2. In botany, capillary plants are hair-shaped, as the ferns; a term used by Ray, Boerhaave and Morison. This class of plants corresponds to the order of Filices, in the Sexual method, which bear their flower and fruit on the back of the leaf or stalk.

This term is applied also to leaves which are longer than the setaceous or bristle-shaped leaf, to glands resembling hairs, to the filaments, to the style, and to the pappus or down affixed to some seeds.

CAPILLARY, noun A fine vessel or canal.