ˈice-plant
A plant (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum), having leaves covered with pellucid watery vesicles looking like ice: a native of the Canary Islands, S. Africa, etc. Also used in Tasmania to refer to two species of Tetragonia.
| 1753 Chambers Cycl. Supp., Ice-Plant..is also commonly called with us the diamond-plant, and the frost-plant. 1767 Abercrombie Ev. Man his own Gard. Apr. 113 The egg plant..like-wise, diamond ficoides, or ice plant. 1889 J. H. Maiden Useful Native Plants Austral. 63 Tetragonia implixicona... Called ‘Ice Plant’ in Tasmania. Baron Mueller suggests that this plant be cultivated for spinach. 1893 Earl Dunmore Pamirs II. 275 On the top of the second Takka pass, I found the ice plant growing. 1898 E. E. Morris Austral Eng. 429/1 Spinach, New Zealand, n. Tetragonia expansa Murr... called also Iceplant, in Tasmania. 1944 Mod. Jun. Dict. (Whitcombe & Tombs) 204 Ice plant... The Tasmanian name for a plant allied to ‘New Zealand spinach’, and to the mesembryanthemum or ‘pig-face’. |