arboreous

From Latin arbor (“tree”).

arboreous

1. Having the characteristics of a tree.^[1] (of a plant)

   Synonyms: ligneous, woody

   Antonym: herbaceous

   • 1684, Thomas Browne, “Observations upon Several Plants Mention’d in Scripture” in Certain Miscellany Tracts, London: Charles Mearne, pp. 28-29,

     For the Parable may not imply any or every grain of Mustard, but point at such a grain as from its fertile spirit, and other concurrent advantages, hath the success to become arboreous, shoot into such a magnitude, and acquire the like tallness.

   • 1831, Patrick Matthew, On Naval Timber and Arboriculture‎, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, Part 4, Chapter 6, p. 288:

     […] the continental climate, that is, having a colder winter and warmer summer, capable of producing considerable vigour of arboreous vegetation, and not so favourable to the generating of […] peat-moss […]

   • 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Out of Time’s Abyss in The Complete Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hastings, UK: Delphi Classics, 2014, Chapter 1,

     dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above their heads

2. Covered or filled with trees.

   Synonym: wooded

   • 1670, John Evelyn, chapter 35, in Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber‎, 2nd edition, London, page 226:

     But among Authours, we meet with nothing more frequent, and indeed more celebrated, than those Arboreous amenities and Plantations of Woods, which they call’d Luci;

   • 1974, Richard Adams, Shardik‎, New York: Simon and Schuster, Book 4, Chapter 35, p. 329:

     The country was no longer plain-land, but an arboreous wilderness interspersed with small fields and fruit orchards.

3. (obsolete) Growing on trees.^[2]
   • 1575, John Banister, A Needefull, New, and Necessarie Treatise of Chyrurgerie‎, London: Thomas Marshe, page 88:

     And those fruites whiche Galene calleth arboreous, are those growing vppon trees.

   • 1657, Jean de Renou, translated by Richard Tomlinson, A Medical Dispensatory‎, London, Book 1, Section 2, Chapter 8, p. 258:

     Mushromes are either terrestrial, which grow out of the earth, or arboreous, which adhere to the stocks of trees;

4. (obsolete, anatomy) Having a tree-like, branching structure.

   Synonym: dendritic

   • 1695, Humphrey Ridley, The Anatomy of the Brain Containing its Mechanism and Physiology‎, London: S. Smith and B. Walford, Chapter 17, figure 7:

     The arboreous ramification of the Meditallium of the Cerebellum appearing, being cut right downwards.

   • 1698, William Cowper, The Anatomy of Humane Bodies, Oxford: S. Smith and B. Walford, Table 56,

     Internal Concave Surface next the Amnios, Appears Cover’d with the Chorion; under which the Arboreous Disposition of its Blood-Vessels are elegantly Exprest.

• arboreal
• arborous