Emily Dickinson Lexicon

UM'BEL, n. [L. umbella, a screen or fan.]

In botany, a particular mode of inflorescence or flowering, which consists of a number of flower-stalks or rays, nearly equal in length, spreading from a common center, their summits forming a level, convex, or even globose surface, more rarely a concave one, as in the carrot. It is simple or compound; in the latter, each peduncle bears another little umbel, umbellet or umbellule. Cyc. Martyn. Umbel is sometimes called a rundle, from its roundness.