Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several perennial herbs of the genus Actaea in the buttercup family, native to northern temperate regions, having terminal clusters of red, white, or blackish berries.
  • noun The poisonous berry of a plant of this genus.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The common name of plants of the genus Actæa: so called because of their nauseous poisonous berries. Also called herb-christopher. See Actæa.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A genus (Actæa) of plants, of the order Ranunculaceæ, native in the north temperate zone. The red or white berries are poisonous.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A flowering plant of the genus Actaea.
  • noun The poisonous berry of one of these plants.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a poisonous berry of a plant of the genus Actaea
  • noun a plant of the genus Actaea having acrid poisonous berries

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Up close they were head-high in a riot of color: red paintbrush, lavender fleabane, hot-pink fireweed, white cow parsnip, lacy green false hellebore, the flashy red of chokecherries, white pearls of baneberry, rich purple huckleberries, fierce yellows of butterweed and arnica.

    Blood Lure Barr, Nevada 2001

  • He called her attention to and brought her samples of ginger leaves, Indian hemp, queen-of-the-meadow, cone-flower, burdock, baneberry, and Indian turnip, as he harvested them in turn.

    The Harvester 1911

  • On the rocky slopes the wild ginger shows its red-brown, long-eared urns, the white baneberry its short white plumes, the branchlets of the bladdernut are breaking into white clusters and columbine soon will "sprinkle on the rocks a scarlet rain" as it did in

    Some Spring Days in Iowa Frederick John Lazell 1905

  • On the wooded slopes there are the white fruits of the baneberry on its quaintly-shaped red stalks, the pretty fruit clusters of the moonseed and the smilax.

    Some Summer Days in Iowa Frederick John Lazell 1905

  • There is baneberry, whose very name sufficiently describes its dangerous nature.

    Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873

  • Here she got the white-clustering baneberry, and little nodding buff cucumber root.

    Margaret 1851

  • At Harms Woods we could see elm-leaved goldenrod and blue-stemmed goldenrod growing with blue cohosh, white baneberry, and Short's aster.

    Chicago Reader 2010

  • At Harms Woods we could see elm-leaved goldenrod and blue-stemmed goldenrod growing with blue cohosh, white baneberry, and Short's aster.

    Chicago Reader 2010

  • At Harms Woods we could see elm-leaved goldenrod and blue-stemmed goldenrod growing with blue cohosh, white baneberry, and Short's aster.

    Chicago Reader 2010

  • Red baneberry, Actaea rubra, produces beautiful red berries that can cause cardiac arrest, with only two or three berries proving fatal if ingested, he said.

    billingsgazette.com 2009

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