tree fern

American

noun

any of various ferns, mostly tropical and chiefly of the family Cyatheaceae, that attain the size of trees, sending up a straight trunklike stem with foliage at the summit.

tree fern British

noun

any of numerous large tropical ferns, mainly of the family Cyatheaceae , having a trunklike stem bearing fronds at the top

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of tree fern

First recorded in 1840–50

Example Sentences

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See Examples For:

tree fern

The most similar modern counterpart might be Dicksonia antarctica, a type of tree fern native to Australasia, but popular in Britain as an ornamental plant.

From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2024

The slow growth also means that the tree fern is short enough that when its fronds die, they droop all the way to the ground.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 29, 2024

Now the first full tree fern genome has been successfully sequenced—that of the flying spider-monkey tree fern—hinting at how these peculiar plants accrued such a massive set of genes.

From Scientific American ● Sep. 23, 2022

In May, Dr. Li led a team that sequenced the full genome of the flying spider monkey tree fern, to try to get an answer.

From New York Times ● Sep. 12, 2022

And there in the centre of the space stood a plant not unlike a tree fern, about six feet high, and crowned by one huge and lovely blossom.

From Gulliver of Mars by Arnold, Edwin Lester Linden

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023