Monœcious

Monœcious (Gr. monos, 'one,' and oikion, 'a habitation'), a term introduced by Linnæus to describe those plants which have the stamens and pistil in different flowers, but upon the same plant—e.g. hop, box, birch, beech, alder, oak, hazel. Such plants formed one of the classes (Monœcia) of the Linnean system, but were obviously a specially artificial alliance, since that partial or complete separation of the sexes to which we apply the terms monœcious or diœcious respectively arises continually among the most unrelated plants or animals. See FLOWER, SEX.