Definition of "scion"

No senate seats in council for the dead; no scion of a time honoured dynasty pants to rule over the inhabitants of a charnel house; the general's hand is cold, and the soldier has his untimely grave dug in his native fields, unhonoured, though in youth.

1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], page 15

Rudolf was the bold, bad Baron of traditional melodrama. Irene was young, as pretty as a picture, fresh from a music academy in England. He was the scion of an ancient noble family; she an orphan without money or friends.

1956, Delano Ames, chapter 9, in Crime out of Mind‎

It was said to him that those people were the scions of Zion.

1966, Sholem Aleichem, An Early Passover, paperback edition, Clifton Pub. Co., page 24

He could show his parents Eliot, scion of Derek Moulthorp, and then how could they say he was throwing his life away?

1986, David Leavitt, The Lost Language of Cranes, paperback edition, Penguin, page 72

[If] you finde a certaine miſlike or conſumption in the plant, you ſhall immediatly vvith a ſharp knife cut the plant off ſlope-vviſe upvvard, about three fingers from the ground, and ſo let it reſt till the next ſpring, at vvhich time you ſhall behold nevv cyons iſſue from the roote, […]

1613, G[ervase] M[arkham], “Of the Setting or Planting of the Cyons or Branches of Most Sorts of Fruit-trees”, in The English Husbandman, […], revised edition, London: […] [Augustine Matthews and John Norton] for Henry Taunton, […], published 1635, 2nd part (Containing the Art of Planting, Grafting, and Gardening, […]), page 132

He used to think that the plums in this country weren’t good enough, and so he has reformed them, grafting scion to rootstock.

2020, Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, Fourth Estate, page 681