Rachis to a short segment of the rachis. This is significant in the history of agriculture, and referred to by archaeologists as a "brittle rachis", one type of shattering in crop plants. Rachis Rachis is a biological term for a main axis or "shaft" (from the Greek "ράχις, backbone, spine"). In vertebrates a "rachis" can refer to the series of articulated vertebrae, which encase the spinal cord. In this case the "rachis" usually forms the supporting axis of the body and is then called the spine or vertebral column. "Rachis" can also mean the central shaft of pennaceous feathers. In the
Calamus (poems) Calamus (poems) The "Calamus" poems are a cluster of poems in "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman. These poems celebrate and promote "the manly love of comrades". Most critics believe that these poems are Whitman's clearest expressions in print of his ideas about homosexual love. The first evidence of the poems that were to become the "Calamus" cluster is an unpublished manuscript sequence of twelve poems entitled "Live Oak With Moss," written in or before spring 1859. These poems were all incorporated in Whitman's 1860 edition of "Leaves of Grass", but out of their original sequence. These poems seem to