What does "basidium" mean?

A small structure, shaped like a club, found in the Basidiomycota division of fungi, that bears four spores at the tips of small projections.

What is a synonym for "basidium"?

Common synonyms include: basid, spore.

//bəˈsɪdɪəm// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A small structure, shaped like a club, found in the Basidiomycota division of fungi, that bears four spores at the tips of small projections.
"The walls of these scleroid basidia often reach 1 μm or more in thickness and the walls stain deeply with congo red."
2
a small club-shaped structure typically bearing four basidiospores at the ends of minute projections; unique to basidiomycetes wordnet

"The walls of these scleroid basidia often reach 1 μm or more in thickness and the walls stain deeply with congo red."

A Latinized form of Ancient Greek βάσις (básis, “base”) + -idium.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.