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A plant in new Zealand (Phormium tenax), allied to the lilies and aloes. The leaves are two inches wide and several feet long, and furnish a fiber which is used for making ropes, mats, and coarse cloth.

loating heart (Bot.), a small aquatic plant (Limnanthemum lacunosum) whose heart-shaped leaves float on the water of American ponds. -- Floating island, a dish for dessert, consisting of custard with floating masses of whipped cream or white of eggs. -- Floating kidney. (Med.) See Wandering kidney, under Wandering.…

r semiprecious stones, often so chosen and arranged that their natural colors represent leaves, flowers, and the like, inlaid in a background, usually of black or white marble.

will do nothing but batter and bruise us. Barrow. With his broad fins and forky tail he laves The rising sirge, and flounces in the waves. Addison.

loral envelopes, the corolla and callyx. In mosses the flowers consist of a few special leaves surrounding or subtending organs called archegonia. See Blossom, and Corolla.

A genus of perennial herbs (Iris) with swordlike leaves and large three-petaled flowers often of very gay colors, but probably white in the plant first chosen for the royal French emblem.

Tending to produce waves. Blount.

Sounding like waves.

Floating on the waves. [Obs.] Bacon.

ove as a wave; to roll hither and thither; to wave; to float backward and forward, as on waves; as, a fluctuating field of air. Blackmore.

A motion like that of waves; a moving in this and that direction; as, the fluctuations of the sea.

To play, whistle, or sing with a clear, soft note, like that of a flute. Knaves are men, That lute and flute fantastic tenderness. Tennyson. The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee. Emerson.

ies around; rumor flies. Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race. Milton. The dark waves murmured as the ships flew on. Bryant.

A plant (Dionæa muscipula), called also Venus's flytrap, the leaves of which are fringed with stiff bristles, and fold together when certain hairs on their upper surface are touched, thus seizing insects that light on them. The insects so caught are afterwards digested by a secretion from the upper surface of the leave…

laited, or doubled; to close over another of the same kind; to double together; as, the leaves of the door fold. 1 Kings vi. 34.

Belonging to, or having the texture or nature of, a leaf; having leaves intermixed with flowers; as, a foliaceous spike.

Leaves, collectively, as produced or arranged by nature; leafage; as, a tree or forest of beautiful foliage.

Consisting of, or pertaining to, leaves; as, foliar appendages. Foliar gap (Bot.), an opening in the fibrovascular system of a stem at the point of origin of a leaf. -- Foliar trace (Bot.), a particular fibrovascular bundle passing down into the stem from a leaf.

Furnished with leaves; leafy; as, a foliate stalk. Foliate curve. (Geom.) Same as Folium.

Having leaves, or leaflike projections; as, a foliated shell.