exarchy

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The jurisdiction of an exarch (any definition); an exarchate.

   “He was warmly received everywhere and the replacement of the exarchy apparatus — the district chairman, directors, inspectors and Bulgarian teachers — went fairly painlessly, which shows that the majority of the Macedonian citizens agreed with and enthusiastically accepted his attitudes.”

   “These exarchies arose in the ninth century when the superiors of monasteries exercised pastoral care of faithful who belonged to churches dependent on the monastery.”

2. (uncountable)A vascular system in which development starts in the regions farthest from the axis and spreads inward.

   “There is no doubt, however, that if endarchy is primitive in the protostelic and immediately derived types, it very rapidly gives place to mesarchy and exarchy in response to various demands, and it is not difficult to show how this may have occurred.”

   “Fossil evidence supports neither the view that exarchy is more primitive than mesarchy, nor the view that mesarchy is more primitive than exarchy.”

   “Exarchy, endarchy, and mesarchy are all found within comparatively small groups, and the actual course of evolution seems to affect the position of the protoxylems much more freely and rapidly than in the other great groups of vascular plants.”