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ovate-sagittate leaves and large fleshy rootstocks, which are cooked and used for food in tropical countries.

The giant armadillo (Priodontes gigas) of tropical South America. It becomes nearly five feet long including the tail. It is noted for its burrowing powers, feeds largely upon dead animals, and sometimes invades human graves.

An armadillo (Xenurus unicinctus), native of the tropical parts of South America. It has about thirteen movable bands composed of small, nearly square, scales. The head is long; the tail is round and tapered, and nearly destitute of scales; the claws of the fore feet are very large. Called also tatouary, and broad-band…

A large oceanic fish (Elops saurus) found in the tropical parts of all the oceans. It is used chiefly for bait.

A genus of leguminous shrubby plants and herbs, mostly found in tropical countries, a few herbaceous species being North American. The foliage is often ashy-pubescent, whence the name.

One of a tribe of fresh-water crabs which live in or on the banks of rivers in tropical countries.

A genus of epiphytic endogenous plants found in the Southern United States and in tropical America. Tillandsia usneoides, called long moss, black moss, Spanish moss, and Florida moss, has a very slender pendulous branching stem, and forms great hanging tufts on the branches of trees. It is often used for stuffing mattr…

A genus of tropical short-tailed snakes, which are not venomous. One species (Tortrix scytalæ) is handsomely banded with black, and is sometimes worn alive by the natives of Brazil for a necklace.

Any one of numerous species of fruit-eating birds of tropical America belonging to Ramphastos, Pteroglossus, and allied genera of the family Ramphastidæ. They have a very large, but light and thin, beak, often nearly as long as the body itself. Most of the species are brilliantly colored with red, yellow, white, and bl…

tropical; figurative; as, a translative sense. [R.] Puttenham.

slender neck and a long hind toe. They are arboreal in their habits, and are found in the tropical parts of America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. -- Tree fern (Bot.), an arborescent fern having a straight trunk, sometimes twenty or twenty-five feet high, or even higher, and bearing a cluster of fronds at the top. Most…

Any one of numerous species of beautiful tropical birds belonging to the family Trogonidæ. They are noted for the brilliant colors and the resplendent luster of their plumage.

Of or pertaining to the tropics; tropical. Tropic bird (Zoöl.), any one of three species of oceanic belonging to the genus Phaëthon, found chiefly in tropical seas. They are mostly white, and have two central tail feathers very long and slender. The yellow-billed tropic bird. Phaëthon flavirostris (called also boatswai…

Characterized by tropes; varied by tropes; tropical. Burton. -- Trop`o*log"ic*al*ly, adv.

A tropical American tree (Cecropia peltata) of the Breadfruit family, having hollow stems, which are used for wind instruments; -- called also snakewood, and trumpet tree.

es. These corals are usually red or purple and form large masses. They are natives of the tropical parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

th words expressing relations of place; as, ultramarine, ultramontane, ultramundane, ultratropical, etc. In other relations it has the sense of excessively, exceedingly, beyond what is common, natural, right, or proper; as, ultraconservative; ultrademocratic, ultradespotic, ultraliberal, ultraradical, etc.…

Any one of several species of harmless tropical American bats of the genus Vampyrus, especially V. spectrum. These bats feed upon insects and fruit, but were formerly erroneously supposed to suck the blood of man and animals. Called also false vampire. Vampire bat (Zoöl.), a vampire, 3.

A genus of climbing orchidaceous plants natives of tropical America.

Any tropical humming bird of the genus Petasophora, having violet or purplish ear tufts.