Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small magnolia tree (Magnolia tripetala) of the southeast United States, having large leaves clustered in an umbrellalike form at the ends of the branches.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In the southern United States, a cultivated flat-topped variety of the china-tree, Melia Azedarach, in which the branches radiate from the main stem like the ribs of an umbrella.
  • noun See grass-tree, 4.
  • noun An American magnolia, Magnolia tripetala (M. Umbrella), widely distributed, but not common, from Pennsylvania southward and southwestward.
  • noun See Thespesia.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun erect evergreen shrub or small tree of Australia and northern New Guinea having palmately compound leaves
  • noun small deciduous tree of eastern North America having creamy white flowers and large leaves in formations like umbrellas at the ends of branches

Etymologies

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Examples

  • They are distinctly southern trees; some species under cultivation in the United States come from Asia, but the two most commonly grown in the Eastern States are the cucumber tree and the umbrella tree.

    Studies of Trees Jacob Joshua Levison

  • No doubt at the time when the survivors of the _Mary Ann_ of Bristol had cached their ill-gotten doubloons a recent fire had swept this point of land so that they had found no difficulty in traversing it, but now the jungle was so thick and matted that I decided to begin by cutting roads to the palm grove and the umbrella tree.

    The Pirate of Panama A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure William MacLeod Raine 1912

  • By this time a path had been cut through to the palm grove and from it to the umbrella tree.

    The Pirate of Panama A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure William MacLeod Raine 1912

  • Henry Hicks (in _Country Life in America), _is the American elm, which ought to be called the umbrella tree.

    Three Acres and Liberty Bolton Hall 1896

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