aecium

Meaning

Noun

• A cuplike fruiting structure of some parasitic rust fungi that contains chains of aeciospores.

Origin

• From New Latin, from Ancient Greek αἰκία.
• However Merriam-Webster relates that aecium is a back-formation from aecidium and is not related to the Greek aikía. The word aecium was "introduced as a substitute for aecidium by the Purdue University plant pathologist J. C. Arthur (1850-1942) in an effort to reform terminology for rust fungi; see Terminology of the Spore-Structures in the Uredinales, Botanical Gazette, vol. 39 (Mar., 1905), pp. 219-22."