What does "glochid" mean?

A small, detachable, irritant spine occurring in dense clusters in the areoles of certain cacti such as the prickly pear.

What is a synonym for "glochid"?

Common synonyms include: glochidium, glochidium.

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A small, detachable, irritant spine occurring in dense clusters in the areoles of certain cacti such as the prickly pear.
"[The bunny-ears cactus is] a particularly unpleasant cactus with thousands of nearly invisible, glochid [...] spines."
2
a barbed spine or bristle (often tufted on cacti) wordnet

"[The bunny-ears cactus is] a particularly unpleasant cactus with thousands of nearly invisible, glochid [...] spines."

From Ancient Greek γλωχίς (glōkhís, “barb of an arrow”).

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