American Dictionary of the English Language

PAN'ICLE, noun [Latin panicula, down upon reeds, cat's tail, allied to Latin pannus, cloth.] In botany, a species of inflorescence, in which the flowers or fruits are scattered on peduncles variously subdivided, as in oats and some of the grasses. The panicle is of various kinds, as the dense or close, the spiked, the squeezed, the spreading, the diffused, the divaricating.