branch A branch, sometimes called a ramus in botany, is a woody structural member connected to the central trunk (botany), trunk of a tree (or sometimes a shrub). Large branches are known as boughs and small branches are known as twigs. The term '' ...

is a part of a woody plant. Branch or branching may also refer to:

Places

;Canada *

Branch, Newfoundland and Labrador The Town of Branch is an incorporated community on the Cape Shore of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada and had a population of 177 (as of the 2021 census). Geography It is located on St. Mary's Bay and can be accessed via Route 100 or Route ...

;France * Branches, Yonne ;United States *

Branch, Arkansas Branch is a city in Franklin County, Arkansas, United States. It is part of the Fort Smith, Arkansas- Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 367 at the 2010 census. Geography Branch is located in southwestern Franklin County ...

* Branch, Louisiana * Branch, Michigan *

Branch, Missouri Branch is an unincorporated community in southwestern Camden County, Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): ...

* Branch, Texas *

Branch, Wisconsin Branch is an unincorporated community located in the Town of Manitowoc Rapids, in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, United States. Branch is located on U.S. Route 10, east of Whitelaw. Branch was named for the nearby Branch River, which flows into ...

Branch County, Michigan Branch County is a county in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 44,862. The county seat is Coldwater. As one of the " cabinet counties" it was named for the U.S. Secretary of the Navy John Branch under Presi ...

* Branch Township (disambiguation) *

Fort Branch, Indiana Fort Branch is the largest town and second largest community in Gibson County, Indiana after Princeton and ahead of the county's other city, Oakland City. The population was 2,771 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Evansville, Indiana, Metropo ...

Fort Branch Fort Branch was a fort built by the Confederate Army especially to defend against attacks from the Union Army along the Roanoke River in North Carolina. The fort was originally built in 1862 along Rainbow Banks in Martin County, southeast of H ...

, North Carolina

People

* Branch (surname), a family name *

Branch McCracken Emmett B. "Branch" McCracken (June 9, 1908 – June 4, 1970) was an American basketball player and coach. He served as the head basketball coach at Ball State University from 1930 to 1938 and at Indiana University Bloomington from 1938 to 1943 a ...

(1908–1970), American college basketball player and coach *

Branch Rickey Wesley Branch Rickey (December 20, 1881 – December 9, 1965) was an American baseball player and sports executive. Rickey was instrumental in breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier by signing black player Jackie Robinson. He also creat ...

(1881–1965), American baseball executive * Branch Rickey Jr. (1914–1961), American baseball executive *

Branch Rickey III Branch Barrett Rickey (born November 1, 1945) is a baseball executive who served as the 17th and final President of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), a Triple-A baseball league competing in Minor League Baseball (MiLB). He previously served as the ...

(born 1945), American baseball executive * Branch Russell (1895–1959), American baseball player

Arts, entertainment, and media

* Branch Connally, a main character in the ''Longmire'' series * ''Branches'' (novel), a 2000 novel-in-verse by American author Mitch Cullin * Branch, a troll in the 2016 film ''

Trolls A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human bei ...

Companies and organizations

Branch (banking) A branch, banking center or financial center is a retail location where a bank, credit union, or other financial institution (including a brokerage firm) offers a wide array of face-to-face and automated services to its customers. History and ...

, a retail location * Branch, an establishment of a

company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...

in a foreign location other than its headquarters **

Branch plant It is not entirely evident who first used the branch plant economy concept; however, it has been extensively used in Canadian and UK literature since the 1970s. This concept broadly describes the negative consequences on the growth of the regions ...

, factory * Branch, a

local union A local union (often shortened to local), in North America, or union branch (known as a lodge in some unions), in the United Kingdom and other countries, is a local branch (or chapter) of a usually national trade union. The terms used for sub-bran ...

, in the trade union movement *

Military branch Military branch (also service branch or armed service) is according to common standard a subdivision of the national armed forces of a sovereign nation or state. Types of branches Unified armed forces The Canadian Armed Forces is the uni ...

, a component of armed forces such as army, navy, or air force

Computing

Branch (computer science) A branch is an instruction in a computer program that can cause a computer to begin executing a different instruction sequence and thus deviate from its default behavior of executing instructions in order. ''Branch'' (or ''branching'', ''branc ...

, a point in a computer program where program-flow may change depending on a condition **

Branch predictor In computer architecture, a branch predictor is a digital circuit that tries to guess which way a branch (e.g., an if–then–else structure) will go before this is known definitively. The purpose of the branch predictor is to improve the flow ...

, the part of a processor that determines whether a conditional branch in the instruction flow of a program is likely to be taken or not **

Branch table In computer programming, a branch table or jump table is a method of transferring program control (Branch (computer science), branching) to another part of a program (or a different program that may have been dynamically loaded) using a table of b ...

, an efficient method of transferring program control (branching) to another part of a program using a table of branch instructions **

Indirect branch An indirect branch (also known as a computed jump, indirect jump and register-indirect jump) is a type of program control instruction present in some machine language instruction sets. Rather than specifying the address of the next instructio ...

, a type of program control instruction *

Branching (revision control) Branching, in version control and software configuration management, is the duplication of an object under version control (such as a source code file or a directory tree). Each object can thereafter be modified separately and in parallel so that th ...

, a way of duplicating an object under revision control

Government and politics

* Country branch *

Government branch Separation of powers refers to the division of a state (polity), state's government into branches, each with separate, independent power (social and political), powers and responsibilities, so that the powers of one branch are not in conflic ...

Electoral branch An election commission is a body charged with overseeing the implementation of electioneering process of any country. The formal names of election commissions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and may be styled an electoral commission, a c ...

Executive branch The Executive, also referred as the Executive branch or Executive power, is the term commonly used to describe that part of government which enforces the law, and has overall responsibility for the governance of a State (polity), state. In poli ...

Judicial branch The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...

Legislative branch A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers of government. Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known as ...

Mathematics

* Branch, in graph theory, a

path A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail. Path or PATH may also refer to: Physical paths of different types * Bicycle path * Bridle path, used by people on horseback * Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle * Desire p ...

is a sequence of edges connecting nodes in a graph or tree * Branch, in set theory, a maximal chain in a

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

Branch point In the mathematical field of complex analysis, a branch point of a multi-valued function (usually referred to as a "multifunction" in the context of complex analysis) is a point such that if the function is n-valued (has n values) at that point, a ...

, a point at which a multiple-valued function changes values *

Branching process In probability theory, a branching process is a type of mathematical object known as a stochastic process, which consists of collections of random variables. The random variables of a stochastic process are indexed by the natural numbers. The origi ...

, a kind of stochastic process *

Principal branch In mathematics, a principal branch is a function which selects one branch ("slice") of a multi-valued function. Most often, this applies to functions defined on the complex plane. Examples Trigonometric inverses Principal branches are used ...

, a function which selects one branch of a multi-valued function

Religion

Branch (LDS Church) A ward is a local congregation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)--with a smaller local congregation known as a branch. A ward is presided over by a bishop, the equivalent of a pastor in many other Christian denomina ...

, the smaller of two types of local congregation in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints * Branch, in

Jesus and messianic prophecy The New Testament frequently cites Jewish scripture to support the claim of the Early Christians that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah, but few of these citations are actual predictions in their original context. The majority of these quotat ...

, a prophetic name attributed by Christians to Jesus *

Branch Davidian The Branch Davidians (or the General Association of Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists) were an apocalyptic new religious movement founded in 1955 by Benjamin Roden. They regard themselves as a continuation of the General Association of ...

, a Christian sect

Science

* Branch, a sometimes-used

taxonomic rank In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms (a taxon) in an ancestral or hereditary hierarchy. A common system consists of species, genus, family (biology), family, order (biology), order, class (b ...

Branching (polymer chemistry) In polymer chemistry, branching is the regular or irregular attachment of side chains to a polymer's backbone chain. It occurs by the replacement of a substituent (e.g. a hydrogen atom) on a monomer subunit by another covalently-bonded chai ...

, when the polymer chain is non-linear *

Branched-chain amino acid A branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) is an amino acid having an aliphatic side-chain with a branch (a central carbon atom bound to three or more carbon atoms). Among the proteinogenic amino acids, there are three BCAAs: leucine, isoleucine, and va ...

, having a non-linear alkyl side-chain *

Branched alkane In organic chemistry, an alkane, or paraffin (a historical trivial name that also has other meanings), is an acyclic saturated hydrocarbon. In other words, an alkane consists of hydrogen and carbon atoms arranged in a tree structure in whi ...

, having a non-linear bonding among the carbon atoms *

Phylogenetic tree A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...

, branching diagram/tree in biology

Other uses

Branch (academia) A branch, sometimes called a ramus in botany, is a woody structural member connected to the central trunk (botany), trunk of a tree (or sometimes a shrub). Large branches are known as boughs and small branches are known as twigs. The term '' ...

, an academic sub-discipline * Branch (bridle), a crooked piece of iron in a bit shank *

Branch (hieroglyph) The ancient Egyptian Branch hieroglyph, also called a Stick, is a member of the trees and plants hieroglyphs. The branch is an Egyptian language biliteral with the value ''(kh)t'', (khet)-(ḫt); it is an ideogram-(determinative), for wood, t ...

, a member of the trees and plants hieroglyphs *

Branch line A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Industrial spur An industri ...

, a relatively minor railway line * Branches, the major sub-families of a

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...

Branching (linguistics) In linguistics, branching refers to the shape of the parse trees that represent the structure of sentences. Assuming that the language is being written or transcribed from left to right, parse trees that grow down and to the right are ''right-bran ...

, the general tendency towards a given order of words within sentences and smaller grammatical units within sentences *

Cadet branch In history and heraldry, a cadet branch consists of the male-line descendants of a monarch's or patriarch's younger sons ( cadets). In the ruling dynasties and noble families of much of Europe and Asia, the family's major assets— realm, title ...

, in genealogy *

Earthly Branches The twelve Earthly Branches or Terrestrial Branches are a Chinese ordering system used throughout East Asia in various contexts, including its ancient dating system, astrological traditions, zodiac and ordinals. Origin This system was built ...

, in Chinese chronology *

Olive branch The olive branch is a symbol of peace and victory associated with customs of ancient Greece and connected with supplication to gods and persons in power. It is found in most cultures of the Mediterranean basin and became associated with peace ...

* USS ''Branch'', a list of U.S. Navy ships