  We revisit a geometric lower bound for Waring rank of polynomials (symmetric
rank of symmetric tensors) of Landsberg and Teitler and generalize it to a
lower bound for rank with respect to arbitrary varieties, improving the bound
given by the "non-Abelian" catalecticants recently introduced by Landsberg and
Ottaviani. This is applied to give lower bounds for ranks of multihomogeneous
polynomials (partially symmetric tensors); a special case is the simultaneous
Waring decomposition problem for a linear system of polynomials. We generalize
the classical Apolarity Lemma to multihomogeneous polynomials and give some
more general statements. Finally we revisit the lower bound of Ranestad and
Schreyer, and again generalize it to multihomogeneous polynomials and some more
general settings.
