Feathered dinosaur the deciduous sheath, forming a tuft of unbranched barbs with a basal calamus. Stage III consists of two developmental novelties, IIIa and IIIb, as either could have occurred first. Stage IIIa involves helical displacement of barb ridges arising within the collar. The barb ridges on the anterior midline of the follicle fuse together, forming the rachis. The creation of a posterior barb locus follows, giving an indeterminate number of barbs. This resulted in a feather with a symmetrical, primarily branched structure with a rachis and unbranched barbs. In stage IIIb, barbules paired within the peripheral barbule plates of the barb
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