The pollen grains and granular material contained within pollen sacs of flowering plants; the fertile dust of pollen.
From Latin 'fovilla,' likely derived from 'favilla' (embers or cinders), referring to the fine, dust-like appearance of pollen grains under early microscopes.
Before modern genetics, botanists called pollen 'fovilla' because they literally thought it looked like ash or dust—they had no idea they were looking at millions of individual male gametes carrying genetic information.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.