In Greek, a bostryxos is a curl or lock of hair, twisted or wreathed. A bostryx, in botany, is a ‘uniparous helicoid cyme’. Uniparous means ‘bearing one at birth’ or ‘one at a time’; and cyme which means ‘having only one axis or branch’. A cyme, really, is a centrifugal or definite inflorescence wherein the primary axis bears a single terminal flower which develops first, and, if bostrychoidal, into a curl. In botany and also elsewhere bostrychoid is more generally accepted as describing forms looking like, or having the character of a ringlet or simple, twisted curl.

 

Spiral staircases and the twining tendrils on ivies and grapes are bostrychoidal. The lazy patterns of smoke in the air are decidedly bostrychoidal, because the old Greeks used bostryxos, by approximation, to designate the undulating patterns created in the sky by a flashes of lightning. A helical curl made was made for the project in reference to shavings like the ones that ‘curl’ out of pencil-sharpeners and turning-lathes. The wood is Tamboti (Spirostachys africana) and Apricot (Prunus armeniaca), and the work was completed on Thursday, 15 July 1993.