decussate

In basil plants, each leaf is about 90 degrees — a quarter-turn — from the last, a template called “decussate.”

In his famous dictionary Samuel Johnson notoriously, and gloriously, defined the word “network” as “any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.”

It consisted of the last letter of the Samaritan alphabet, the tau or tav in its decussated or most primitive form, and may be described, as it has been sometimes, as a cruciform hammer.

Having branches in pairs, decussated, all nearly horizontal, and each pair at right angles with the next, as in the maple and lilac.

A decussated cross, on which St. Andrew was crucified, indicates his day.