Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

verbena

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Hoary vervain, Verbena stricta verbena, common name for some members of the Verbenaceae, a family of herbs, shrubs, and trees (often climbing forms) of warmer regions of the world. Well-known ...

sagebrush

(Encyclopedia)sagebrush, name for several species of Artemisia, deciduous shrubs of the family Asteraceae (aster family), particularly abundant in arid regions of W North America. The common sagebrush (A. tridentat...

tundra

(Encyclopedia)tundra tŭnˈdrə [key], treeless plains of N North America and N Eurasia, lying principally along the Arctic Circle, on the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean, and to the north of the coniferous ...

bedbug

(Encyclopedia)bedbug, any of the small, blood-sucking bugs of the family Cimicidae, which includes about 30 species distributed throughout the world. Bedbugs are flat-bodied, oval, reddish brown, and about 1⁄4 in...

Rotifera

(Encyclopedia)Rotifera, phylum of predominantly free-living, microscopic, aquatic or semiterrestrial pseudocoelomates. Each rotifer has a head bearing a crown of cilia, the corona, at the anterior end; most rotifer...

hare

(Encyclopedia)hare, name for certain herbivorous mammals of the family Leporidae, which also includes the rabbit and pika. The name is applied especially to species of the genus Lepus, sometimes called the true har...

grasshopper

(Encyclopedia)grasshopper, name applied to almost 9,000 different species of singing, jumping insects in two families of the order Orthoptera. Grasshoppers are long, slender, winged insects with powerful hind legs ...

ground squirrel

(Encyclopedia)ground squirrel, name applied to certain terrestrial rodents of the squirrel family. In North America the name refers to members of the genus Citellus and sometimes to the closely related genera Tamia...

fly, in zoology

(Encyclopedia)fly, name commonly used for any of a variety of winged insects, but properly restricted to members of the order Diptera, the true flies, which includes the housefly, gnat, midge, mosquito, and tsetse ...

opossum

(Encyclopedia)opossum əpŏsˈəm, pŏsˈ– [key], name for several marsupials, or pouched mammals, of the family Didelphidae, native to Central and South America, with one species extending N to the United States...

Browse by Subject