tindery

FIRE -- FED BY THE treacherous Santa Ana winds, sweeping through the canyons and roaring across the tindery flatlands -- has been an essential part of nature's plan for southern California for millennia.

A Flammable Mix Of Man And Nature 2008

Eight months of the year there is no rain, and many of these native plants have waxy leaves that form a tindery mass as they dry out and fall to the ground.

A Flammable Mix Of Man And Nature 2008

Last December the city's Housing Authority spent $125,000 to support 500 volunteers who are ready to chill out tindery neighborhoods at the first spark of violence.

L.A.: Waiting On A Razor's Edge 2008

What woman would have her-self supposed capable of such a tindery fit?

Sir Charles Grandison 2006

Often big trees die from no apparent cause, and the wood becoming dry and tindery, the limbs crash to the ground suddenly, and in a few months the whole substance disappears in dust and mould.

Tropic Days 2003

Sapless age makes it tindery, and the decaying fibre descends in dust — glissades of dust which form moraines within the hollow of the base.

Tropic Days 2003

Adjacent to the crude fence once stood a huge coral-tree which had had its day and ceased to be, and the soft wood as it decayed formed heaps of tindery stuff that mingled with the sand, helped to this end by the industry of scrub-fowls.

Last Leaves from Dunk Island 2003

From past conversations with Burwell, Frederick knew flash fuels were light, dry, tindery materials such as twigs and grasses that burned fast and hot.

Firestorm Barr, Nevada 1996

She snatched the poker and jabbed it viciously into the tindery mass, heedless of the shower of sparks that flew from the hearth and hissed about her booted feet.

Dragonfly in Amber Gabaldon, Diana 1992

Cadfael stooped and picked it up, and the thicker end, broken and dangling, shed a fluttering debris of tindery flakes as he swung it in his hand.

The Holy Thief Peters, Ellis, 1913-1995 1992