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 Branches () is a commune in the Yonne department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in north-central France. See also *Communes of the Yonne department The following is a list of the 423 communes of the Yonne Yonne () is a department in the Bour ...

;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 is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Acadia Parish, Louisiana Acadia Parish (french: link=no, Paroisse de l'Acadie) is a List of parishes in Louisiana, parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2020 U ...

* Branch, Michigan * Branch, Missouri *

Branch, Texas Branch is an unincorporated community in Collin County, Texas, Collin County, located in the U.S. state of Texas. Geography Boundary On June 30, 2011, a Collin County District Court Judge issued a judgment ending a legal dispute over Princeton's ...

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 Township (disambiguation) Branch Township may refer to: * Branch Township, Michigan * Branch Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania See also * North Branch Township (disambiguation) * South Branch Township (disambiguation) * West Branch Township (disambiguation) West ...

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 Ham ...

, 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. Wesley Branch Rickey Jr. (January 31, 1914 – April 10, 1961) was an American front office executive in Major League Baseball. The son of Baseball Hall of Fame club executive Branch Rickey, who among his many achievements invented the farm syst ...

(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 Branch Lee Russell (October 9, 1895 – May 1, 1959) was an American Negro league outfielder in the 1920s and 1930s. A native of South Boston, Virginia, Russell grew up in Winchester, Massachusetts, and attended Henderson Institute in Hende ...

(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 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, 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 point in a computer program where program-flow may change depending on a condition ** Branch predictor, 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, 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 Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...

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, 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, 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, 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), an academic sub-discipline *

Branch (bridle) The bit shank is the side piece or cheekpiece of a curb bit, part of the bridle, used when riding on horses. The bit shank allows leverage to be added to the pressure of the rider's hands on the bit. Shanks are usually made of metal, may be stra ...

, a crooked piece of iron in a bit shank * Branch (hieroglyph), a member of the trees and plants hieroglyphs * Branch line, 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), 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 * USS ''Branch'', a list of U.S. Navy ships