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utensil, made from the dry shell of a calabash or gourd. Calabash tree. (Bot.), a tree of tropical America (Crescentia cujete), producing a large gourdike fruit, containing a purgative pulp. Its hard shell, after the removal of the pulp, is used for cups, bottles, etc. The African calabash tree is the baobab.…

A genus of tropical plants, with large leaves and often with showy flowers. The Indian shot. (C. Indica) is found in gardens of the northern United States.

A tenacious, elastic, gummy substance obtained from the milky sap of several plants of tropical South America (esp. the euphorbiaceous tree Siphonia elastica or Hevea caoutchouc), Asia, and Africa. Being impermeable to liquids and gases, and not readly affected by exposure to air, acids, and alkalies, it is used, espec…

A tree (Anacardium occidentale) of the same family which the sumac. It is native in tropical America, but is now naturalized in all tropical countries. Its fruit, a kidney-shaped nut, grows at the extremity of an edible, pear-shaped hypocarp, about three inches long. Casbew nut, the large, kidney-shaped fruit of the ca…

the Myriapoda; esp. the large, flattened, venomous kinds of the order Chilopoda, found in tropical climates. they are many-jointed, and have a great number of feet. [Written also centipede (

One of a tropical family of snakelike lizards (Chalcidæ), having four small or rudimentary legs.

One of the Chromidæ, a family of fresh-water fishes abundant in the tropical parts of America and Africa. Some are valuable food fishes, as the bulti of the Nile.

A tropical fish of the Atlantic ocean (Dutes auriga); -- called also charioteer. The name refers to a long, lashlike spine of the dorsal fin.

A mammal of tropical America of the genus Nasua, allied to the raccoon, but with a longer body, tail, and nose.

A palm tree producing the cocoanut (Cocos nucifera). It grows in nearly all tropical countries, attaining a height of sixty or eighty feet. The trunk is without branches, and has a tuft of leaves at the top, each being fifteen or twenty feet in length, and at the base of these the nuts hang in clusters; the cocoanut tr…

wing in Abyssinia, Arabia, Persia, and other warm regions of Asia and Africa, and also in tropical America.

A genus of sterculiaceous trees, natives of tropical Africa, esp. Guinea, but now naturalized in tropical America, esp. in the West Indies and Brazil.

A genus of univale shells, abundant in tropical seas. Some species, as Columbella mercatoria, were formerly used as shell money.

A tropical humming bird of the genus Lophornis, with very elegant neck plumes. Several species are known. See Illustration under Spangle, v. t.

. (b) A small, harmless, South American snake (Tortrix scytale). -- Coral tree (Bot.), a tropical, leguminous plant, of several species, with showy, scarlet blossoms and coral-red seeds. The best known is Erythrina Corallodendron. -- Coral wood, a hard, red cabinet wood. McElrath.

A genus of euphorbiaceous plants belonging to tropical countries. Croton oil (Med.), a viscid, acrid, brownish yellow oil obtained from the seeds of Croton Tiglium, a small tree of the East Indies. It is a most powerful drastic cathartic, and is used externally as a pustulant.

a; in med., Cubeba officinalis), native in Java and Borneo, but now cultivated in various tropical countries. The dried unripe fruit is much used in medicine as a stimulant and purgative.

A soft grass (Pennisetum typhoideum) found in all tropical regions, used as food for men and cattle in Central Africa.

lk and eggs, sweetened, and baked or boiled. Custard apple (Bot.), a low tree or shrub of tropical America, including several species of Anona (A. squamosa, reticulata, etc.), having a roundish or ovate fruit the size of a small orange, containing a soft, yellowish, edible pulp. -- Custard coffin, pastry, or crust, wh…

A tropical aroid (of the genus Caladium, syn. Colocasia) having an edible farinaceous root. It is related to the taro and to the tanier, but is much superior to it in quality and is as easily cooked as the potato. It is a staple food plant of the tropics, being prepared like potatoes, and has been introduced into the S…