A developing or bud-like style (reproductive column) in flowers, or a bud-bearing column in certain colonial animals like hydroids.
From Greek 'blastos' (bud) + 'stylos' (column, pillar). Term appears in 19th-century botanical and zoological literature for structures in their early developmental form.
Hydroids are colonial animals where 'blastostyles' are special structures that look like columns with buds—they're like tiny assembly lines where baby animals get produced and released into the ocean.
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