Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A name of various trees having an abundance of milky juice, especially of a South American tree, Brosimum galactodendron, natural order Urticaceæ, and allied to the fig-tree.
- noun In British Guiana, the hya-hya or milk-tree, Tabernæmontana utilis. See
milk-tree , 2, and Tabernæmontana. - noun The karaka of New Zealand, Corynocarpus lævigata, so called by the colonists from the fondness of cows for its leaves. See
karaka .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of various South American trees which, when
wounded ,exude a richmilky liquid. - noun Couma
macrocarpa of the familyApocynaceae , a tropical rain forest tree native to Colombia. - noun Gymnema lactiferum, native to Ceylon.
- noun
Manilkara bidentata , native to Brazil
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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One of the very remarkable trees of South America -- a region notable for its natural-history wonders -- is that called the cow-tree.
Chatterbox, 1905. Various
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Near this lake Humboldt received proof of the truth of the accounts he had heard of an extraordinary tree, the palo de la vaca, or cow-tree, which yields a balsamic and very nutritive milk, drawn off from incisions made in the bark.
Celebrated Travels and Travellers Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century Jules Verne 1866
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One of the noblest trees of the forest is the Massaranduba, or "cow-tree" (_Brosimum galactodendron_), often rising one hundred and fifty feet.
The Andes and the Amazon Across the Continent of South America James Orton 1853
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The Novus Orbis of Laet, in which I found the first account of the cow-tree, furnishes also a description and a figure singularly exact of the fruit of the bertholletia.
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Sometimes it is morphine or the narcotic principle, that characterises the vegetable milk, as in some papaverous plants; sometimes it is caoutchouc, as in the hevea and the castilloa; sometimes albumen and caseum, as in the cow-tree.
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It is called the cow-tree; and we were assured that the negroes of the farm, who drink plentifully of this vegetable milk, consider it a wholesome aliment.
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Amidst the great number of curious phenomena which I have observed in the course of my travels, I confess there are few that have made so powerful an impression on me as the aspect of the cow-tree.
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Indies by Laet, a Dutch traveller, a passage that seems to have some relation to the cow-tree.
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The milk of the cow-tree contains, on the contrary, a caseous matter, like the milk of mammiferous animals.
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On comparing the milky juices of the papaw, the cow-tree, and the hevea, there appears a striking analogy between the juices which abound in caseous matter, and those in which caoutchouc prevails.
bilby commented on the word cow-tree
Hello images, is it too much to ask for a nice picture of a tree with cows in it?
March 24, 2016