In botany, describing a flower that has ten sepals (the leaf-like structures that form the outer layer of a flower).
From the Greek prefix 'deca-' (ten) combined with 'sepal,' itself from 'sepalum' (modern botanical term, possibly from French 'sépale'). This botanical terminology crystallized in the 18th-19th centuries.
Most flowers follow predictable sepal patterns—decasepalous flowers are evolutionary misfits that reveal how plants constantly experiment with structural variations, and botanists use these variations to identify plant families and relationships.
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