Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A genus of dicotyledonous trees of the natural order Hamamelideæ distinguished by monœcious flowers without petals, growing in heads and surrounded by an involucre of four bracts. The carpels of the fruit are tipped by long, persistent styles, and the leaves are palmately lobed and deciduous. There are two species—one, L. orientalis of Asia Minor, furnishing the balsam called
liquid storax ; the other, L. styracíflua of the warmer parts of North America, extending as far north as Connecticut, Ohio, etc., abundant and at its best on bottom-lands in the South. The latter is a large tree with handsome, shining, star-shaped leaves. In hot regions it exudes a gum, sometimes calledcopalm (a name also given to the tree) or copal-balsam, used in the preparation of chewing-gum, and to some extent in medicine as a substitute for storax. The tree is variously named sweet-gum, starleafed gum, liquid-amber (liquidamber) or amber, red-gum, and bilsted, as well as copalm. From the corky ridges of its branches, it has been calledalligator-tree . Fossil remains of the genus are found in the Tertiary deposits of Europe, Greenland, Alaska, California, and Colorado, and also in Japan, and one species occurs in the Cretaceous of Kansas and Nebraska. Sixteen fossil species have been described. - n. [lowercase] A tree of this genus.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A genus consisting of two species of tall trees having star-shaped leaves, and woody burlike fruit. Liquidambar styraciflua is the North American sweet qum, and Liquidambar Orientalis is found in Asia Minor.
- n. The balsamic juice which is obtained from these trees by incision. The liquid balsam of the Oriental tree is
liquid storax .
WordNet 3.0
- n. any tree of the genus Liquidambar
- n. aromatic exudate from the sweet gum tree
- n. sweet gum
Examples
“See "Liquidambar," sweet-gum, for detail of experiments.”
“See my own experiments upon the applicability of the leaves as a substitute for oak bark, under "Liquidambar," sweet-gum.”
“The southern and western zones are also subject to the uncontrolled extraction of precious woods such as mahogany Swietenia macrophyla, Liquidambar styraciflua and palm Roystonea donlapiana. 25% of the southern end of the Reserve was said to have been deforested by 1992 and COHDEFOR itself lost credibility when locals were penalized for cutting trees but powerful logging interests were permitted a sawmill within the reserve.”
“Species of southern distribution, such as sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), river birch (Betula nigra), Spanish oak (Quercus falcata), and red mulberry (Moros rubra) have reached or are reaching their northern limits.”
“We also found a white blooming tree that smelled precisely like styrax Liquidambar orientalis.”
“So the tree of life is a sweetgum tree Liquidambar styraciflua?”
“The Sütçüler Sığla Ormanı Nature Reserve is dedicated to the conservation of the oriental sweet gum (Liquidambar orientalis), a narrow endemic tree species which occurs as a riverine community along the Karacaören stream.”
Eastern Mediterranean conifer-sclerophyllous-broadleaf forests
“A number of trees are important flagships, including the cedars (such as the famous cedar of Lebanon, Cedrus libani, which has been exploited since the rise of civilization in the Fertile Crescent); the argan tree (Argania spinosa), a species in the Souss region of southwest Morocco; oriental sweet gum (Liquidambar orientalis); and Cretan date palm (Phoenix theophrasti) in Greece and western Turkey.”
“Savanna-like areas occur on poorly drained soils and contain scattered individuals of longleaf and loblolly pine along with tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) and magnolia (Magnolia virginiana).”
“A large portion of the pine-oak forests in the central and western Honduras contains predominant species of Pinus oocarpa and Quercus spp. at lower elevations, and Pinus pseudostrobus and Liquidambar styraciflua at higher elevations.”
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