ˈthorn-tree
a. A tree having or bearing thorns; in Great Britain, usually a hawthorn tree; in southern Africa, usually an acacia.
| 1483 Cath. Angl. 384/1 A Thorne tree, mespula, rampnus. 1785 G. Forster tr. Sparrman's Voy. Cape of Good Hope I. ix. 324 Being once upon a plain under the shelter of a few scambling thorn-trees, (mimosa Nilotica) he thought he should steal upon an elephant that was near the spot. 1798 A. Barnard Jrnl. 13 May in Lives of Lindsays (1849) III. 440, I plucked from the great thorn-trees some of their prickles. 1850 R. G. Cumming Hunter's Life S. Afr. (1902) 60/1 A clump of tangled thorn-trees. 1856 Stanley Sinai & Pal. x. 363 The ‘Nabk’, or thorn-tree,..here breaks out along the hill-sides in thick jungles. 1895 Atlantic Monthly July 61 The thorn-tree before me was perhaps fifteen feet high. 1970 Stand. Encycl. S. Afr. I. 10/2 In South Africa the indigenous members of the genus [Acacia] as a whole are generally referred to as ‘thorn-trees’ or ‘acacias’. |
b. attrib. thorn-tree fly, a March trout-fly, a thorn-fly or hawthorn-fly, q.v.
| 1676 Cotton Walton's Angler ii. vii. (1881) 285 There is also for this month [March], a fly, called the Thorn-tree fly; the dubbing is..black, mixed with eight or ten hairs of Isabella-coloured mohair. 1787 Best Angling 99 March. The Thorn or Hawthorn Tree fly. 1909 Westm. Gaz. 4 May 2/3 Scant thorn-tree shade where white sheep flock. |