redwood

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A very tall, evergreen, coniferous tree (Sequoia sempervirens) native to the coastal ranges of southern Oregon and central and northern California, having small seed-bearing cones with peltate scales and unflattened branches.
2. n. The soft reddish wood of this tree. Also called sequoia.
3. n. Any of various woods having a reddish color or yielding a red dye.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The most valuable of Californian timber-trees, Sequoia sempervirens, or its wood. It occupies the Coast ranges, where exposed to ocean fogs, from the northern limit of the State to the southern borders of Monterey county, but is most abundant north of San Francisco. It is the only congener of the famous big or mammoth tree, which it almost rivals in size. It grows commonly from 200 to 300 feet high, with a straight cylindrical trunk, naked to the height of 70 or 100 feet; the diameter is from 8 to 12 feet. The bark is from 6 to 12 inches thick, of a bright cinnamon color; the wood is of a rich brownish red, light, straight-grained, easily worked and taking a fine finish, and very durable in contact with the soil. It is the prevailing and most valuable building-timber of the Pacific coast; in California it is used almost exclusively for shingles, fence-posts, railwayties, telegraph-poles, wine-butts, etc.
2. n. The name is also applied to various other trees. Thus, the East Indian redwoods are Soymida febrifuga, also called East Indian mahogany; Pterocarpus santalinus, the red sandalwood (see sandalwood); and P. Indieus (including P. dalbergioides) the Andaman redwood, or padouk. The last is a lofty tree of India, Burma, the Andaman Islands, etc., with the heart-wood dark-red, close-grained, and moderately hard, used to make furniture, gun-carriages, carts, and for many other purposes. Other trees called redwood are Cornus mas, of Tuikey; Rhamnus Erythroxylon, the siberian buckthorn; Melhania Erythroxylon of the Stereuliaceæ, an almost extinct tree of St. Helena: the Jamaican Laplacea (Gordonia) Hæmatoxylon of the Ternstrœmiaceæ; Colubrina ferruginosa, a rhamnaeeous tree of the Bahamas: Ochna arborea of the Cape of Good Hope; Ceanothux spinosus, a shrub or small tree of southern California; and any tree of the genus Erytkroxylon. Redwood is also a local name of the Scotch pine. See pine.
3. Stark mad.
4. n. The chittagong-wood, Chukrasia tabularis.
5. n. Guilandina crista; and.
6. n. Baryxylum Linnæi (Peltophorum Linnæi of Bentham).

Wiktionary

1. n. countable, uncountable the USDA-preferred term for the species Sequoia sempervirens.
2. n. countable any of the evergreen conifers belonging to the genus Sequoia in the wide sense.
3. n. uncountable the wood of the species Sequoia sempervirens.
4. n. uncountable, UK, obsolete the wood of the species Pinus sylvestris
5. adj. Pertaining to any of the evergreen conifers belonging to the genus Sequoia in the wide sense
6. adj. Pertaining to the wood of the species Sequoia sempervirens.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A gigantic coniferous tree (Sequoia sempervirens) of California, and its light and durable reddish timber. See sequoia.
2. n. An East Indian dyewood, obtained from Pterocarpus santalinus, Cæsalpinia Sappan, and several other trees.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. either of two huge coniferous California trees that reach a height of 300 feet; sometimes placed in the Taxodiaceae
2. n. the soft reddish wood of either of two species of sequoia trees