Plexus

This article is about anatomy term. For the 1953 novel by Henry Miller, see The Rosy Crucifixion § Plexus. For other uses, see Plexus (disambiguation).

A plexus (from the Latin for "braid") is a branching network of vessels or nerves. The vessels may be blood vessels (veins, capillaries) or lymphatic vessels. The nerves are typically axons outside the central nervous system.

Although many medical words ending in -us that came to English from Latin have the plural suffix -i (and the plural form plexi indeed does exist in Latin), English does not use the -us/-i pattern for this particular term; the standard plural form in English is plexuses.

Plexuses

• Nervous plexus

The four primary nerve plexuses are the cervical plexus, brachial plexus, lumbar plexus, and the sacral plexus.

• Choroid plexus

The choroid plexus is a part of the central nervous system in the brain and consists of capillaries, ventricles, and ependymal cells.

• Venous plexus
• Cardiac plexus
• Celiac plexus

In invertebrates

The plexus is the characteristic form of nervous system in the coelenterates and persists with modifications in the flatworms. The nerves of the radially symmetric echinoderms also take this form, where a plexus underlies the ectoderm of these animals and deeper in the body other nerve cells form plexuses of limited extent.