Poinciana

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A tropical tree, of species Delonix regia, with bright red flowers, native to Madagascar and now widely cultivated as an ornamental; the royal poinciana or flamboyant.

    "[I]n disturbed areas, like East Point, exotic trees like poinciana and "coffee bush" invade the edges."

  2. 2
    a tropical flowering shrub having bright orange or red flowers; sometimes placed in genus Poinciana wordnet
  3. 3
    A tropical shrub, Caesalpinia pulcherrima, with bright orange-red flowers, originally native to the Americas and now widely cultivated as an ornamental.

Synonyms

All synonyms
bird of paradisebird of paradisecaesalpinia gilliesiipoinciana gilliesiisubgenus poinciana

Example

More examples

"[I]n disturbed areas, like East Point, exotic trees like poinciana and "coffee bush" invade the edges."

Etymology

Modern Latin: after M. de Poinci, a 17th-century governor of the Antilles + -ana.

Related phrases

royal poinciana

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.