"Spiny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buds. The flowers, produced near the apex of the plant, are generally large and showy, yellow and rose being the prevailing colours. They are succeeded by succulent fruits, which are exserted, and frequently scaly or spiny, in which respects this genus differs both from Melocactus and Mamrmllaria, which have the fruits immersed and smooth. One of the most interesting species is the E. ingens, of which some very large plants have been from time to time imported. These large plants ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... bolted down some roasted muckluck. Overhead the stars glittered vindictively. They were green and blue and red, and they had spiny rays like starfish on which they danced. This night he had to make tremendous efforts to keep from sleeping. Several times he drowsed forward, and almost fell into the fire. As he crouched there his beard was singeing and his ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... dozen which make up its genus. Though slow in growth, it shoots up a magnificent stem, to the height sometimes of eighty feet, the summit of which is covered with a graceful crown of pinnated leaves. The trunk is exceedingly rough and spiny; the flower spathes, which appear in the axils of the leaves, are woody, and contain branched spadices with many flowers; more than 11,000 have been counted on a single male spadix. As the flowers are dioecious, it is necessary to ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... like the wind even before the car had started. During the last three miles the ground had been changing rapidly, and we soon reached a stony plain where there was imminent danger of smashing a front wheel. The wolf was heading directly toward a rocky slope which lay against the sky like the spiny back of some gigantic monster ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... figure is excellent in the present case, and gives the idea of what we regard the typical marking of the capillitium in A. oerstedtii. Externally the species resembles somewhat A. nodulosa, and the network of the capillitium is also suggestive of that form; the spiny ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... cried Chattering a moment after in the light, And singing out of such contentment as Lamps and familiar voices bring. She needs must sing Now that sharp, spiny agony thrust no more, Nor water fell, drip, drip by quivering drip; Her face was bright, Unapprehensive as a day ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... thinking pleasant thoughts such as the effect upon himself of dropping suddenly to that sliding relief map away down below. He hoped that Cliff was afraid of being lost, and of landing on some high mountain that stuck up like a little hill above the general assembly of dimpled valleys and spiny ridges and hills. But if Cliff were afraid he did not say so, and when the double-pointed hill that Johnny had reason to remember slid toward them, Cliff pointed ahead to another, turned his ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... its slighter trunk and pendent branches of small berry-like fruit; the palmetto, with its tender succulent bud on the summit of the stem, used as a vegetable, and proving an excellent substitute for cabbage; the thorny icari, or cari—a variety of fan-palm. Its spiny stems and leaves, which cut like razors, make it difficult to approach. Its bunches of bright chestnut-brown fruit hang from between the leaves which form its crown, each bunch about a foot in length, massive and compact, like a large cluster of ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... to defile them. Round about may be noted signs of recent excavations; here the earth is sunken, there it forms a low mound. There grow in all their luxuriance the tarambulo to prick the feet with its spiny berries and the pandakaki to add its odor to that of the cemetery, as if the place did not have smells enough already. Yet the ground is sprinkled with a few little flowers which, like those skulls, are known only to their Creator; their petals wear a pale smile ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... 200 nm territorial sea: 12 nm International disputes: none Climate: tropical; marine; moderated by trade winds; sunny and relatively dry Terrain: low, flat limestone; extensive marshes and mangrove swamps Natural resources: spiny lobster, conch Land use: arable land: 2% permanent crops: 0% meadows and pastures: 0% forest and woodland: 0% other: 98% Irrigated land: NA km2 Environment: 30 islands (eight inhabited); subject ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... incalculable value that I haven't time to describe completely. Among these exhibits I'll mention, just for the record: an elegant royal hammer shell from the Indian Ocean, whose evenly spaced white spots stood out sharply against a base of red and brown; an imperial spiny oyster, brightly colored, bristling with thorns, a specimen rare to European museums, whose value I estimated at 20,000 francs; a common hammer shell from the seas near Queensland, very hard to come by; exotic cockles from Senegal, fragile white bivalve ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... is very similar to that of South America. Palms are very numerous, but they are generally small and horridly spiny. There are none of the large and majestic species so abundant on the Amazon. I am so busy with insects now that I have no time for anything else, I send now about a thousand beetles to Mr. Stevens, and I have as many other insects still on ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... 'tis made Of atoms not so smooth, so fine, and round. For the light breeze that hovers yet can blow High heaps of poppy-seed away for thee Downward from off the top; but, contrariwise, A pile of stones or spiny ears of wheat It can't at all. Thus, in so far as bodies Are small and smooth, is their mobility; But, contrariwise, the heavier and more rough, The more immovable they prove. Now, then, Since nature of mind is movable so much, Consist it must of seeds exceeding small ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... when I started for Castel del Monte. It was spring, and I was going to see my love. The land about on either side, as I went, was faintly flushed with peach-blossom shining among the hoary stones. By the cliff edge the spiny cactus threw out strange withered arms. A whitethorn without spike or spine gracefully wept floods of ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... vertical rows of small thorned lumps converging at the top of the "nigger-head," as they are sometimes called, grows in great numbers in crevices on the walls. The delicate "pin cushion" gathered in clusters of myriad small spiny balls. The prickly pear, here in Ha Va Su Canyon, were not the starved, shrivelled, mineral-tinted cactus such as we found at the beginning of our trip. Instead they were green and flourishing, with large fleshy leaves joining on to each other until they rise ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb |
