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Describing tissues, organs, or organisms consisting of a mass of protoplasm not divided by cell walls into discrete units. The term may be used of relatively large uninucleate organisms, such as the alga Acetabularia, to distinguish them from comparatively less specialized and smaller unicellular organisms. More often acellular structures are multinucleate and result from free nuclear division with no accompanying cell wall formation. When describing multinucleate organisms, tissues, or cells the term is synonymous with coenocytic. Examples of acellular multinucleate tissues are the endosperm of certain angio-sperms and the initial stages in formation of the proembryo in Cycas. Acellular multinucleate organisms include algae of the order Siphonales.
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