Feather hidden by them, with one or two filoplumes attached and sprouting from near the same point of the skin as each contour feather, at least on a bird's head, neck and trunk. In some passerines, filoplumes arise exposed beyond the contour feathers on the neck. The remiges, or flight feathers of the wing, and rectrices, the flight feathers of the tail are the most important feathers for flight. A typical vaned feather features a main shaft, called the rachis. Fused to the rachis are a series of branches, or barbs; the barbs themselves are also branched and form the barbules.
Calamus (poems) This cluster of poems contains a number of images and motifs that are repeated throughout. The most important is probably the Calamus root itself. "Acorus calamus" or Sweet Flag is a marsh-growing plant similar to a cat-tail. Whitman continues through this one of the central images of "Leaves of Grass"--Calamus is treated as a larger example of the grass that he writes of elsewhere. Some scholars have pointed out, as reasons for Whitman's choice, the phallic shape of what Whitman calls the "pink-tinged roots" of Calamus, its mythological association with failed male same-sex love and with writing (see Kalamos), and