Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small Old World tree, Pyrus Aria, having the under side of its foliage, as well as the young twigs and inflorescence, clothed with silvery down. See
beam-tree .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) The common beam tree of England (
Pyrus Aria ); -- so called from the white, woolly under surface of the leaves.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of various
deciduous trees of the genus Sorbus subg. Aria, native toEurasia .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In the artificial limestone pavement of the quarries, native whitebeam had sprung up, and we found a lime kiln hidden in the trees.
Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009
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In the artificial limestone pavement of the quarries, native whitebeam had sprung up, and we found a lime kiln hidden in the trees.
Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009
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Vine Parthenocissus himalayana and clematis Clematis montana are also common and other low altitude trees include maple Acer campbellii and whitebeam Sorbus cuspidata.
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Then, whereas the day was very calm and fair, and the dame had given her holiday, she wandered about the eyot, and most in a little wood of berry-trees, as quicken and whitebeam and dog-wood, and sported with the birds, who feared her not, but came and sat on her shoulders, and crept about her feet.
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“How red the whitebeam berries are!” he murmured, not knowing why.
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He remembered that just under the window there were several thick and high bushes of elder and whitebeam.
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At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs; whitebeam, with its great silver-backed leaves, and mountain ash, and oak; and below them cliff and crag, cliff and crag, with great beds of crown ferns and wood sedge; while through the shrubs he could see the stream sparkling, and hear it murmur on the white pebbles.
Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 2 Charles Herbert Sylvester
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Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.
Love in the Valley 1919
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Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:
Love in the Valley 1919
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Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:
Love in the Valley 1909
treeseed commented on the word whitebeam
The whitebeams are members of the Rosaceae family, in genus Sorbus subgenus Aria. They are deciduous trees with simple or lobed leaves, arranged alternately. They are related to the rowans (Sorbus subgenus Sorbus), and many of the endemic restricted-range apomictic microspecies of whitebeam in Europe are thought to derive from hybrids between S. aria and the European rowan S. aucuparia; some are also thought to be hybrids with the Wild Service Tree S. torminalis, notably the Service Tree of Fontainebleau Sorbus latifolia in French woodlands.
The best known species is Common Whitebeam Sorbus aria, but several other species from Europe and Asia in particular are widely cultivated as ornamental trees.
_Wikipedia
February 17, 2008