Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various extinct, chiefly Carboniferous trees of the genus Calamites, anatomically similar to the modern-day herbaceous horsetails (Equisetum).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fossil of the genus Calamites.
  • noun A variety of tremolite occurring in imperfect or rounded prismatic crystals, longitudinally striated, and sometimes resembling a reed.

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

  • noun (Paleon.) A fossil plant of the coal formation, having the general form of plants of the modern Equiseta (the Horsetail or Scouring Rush family) but sometimes attaining the height of trees, and having the stem more or less woody within. See acrogen, and asterophyllite.

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

  • noun A genus of extinct treelike horsetails, Calamites.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin Calamītēs, genus name, from Late Greek kalamītēs, reedlike, from Greek kalamos, reed.]

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