coral-tree: A genus of the decandria order, belonging to the diadelphia clas of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 3rd order, Papilionaceae. The calyx is bilabiate, the one lip above, the other below; the vexillum of the corolla is very long and lanceolate. There are four species, all of them shrubby flowering exotics for the stove, adorned chiefly with trifoliolate or three-lobed leaves, and scarlet spikes of papilionaceous flowers. They are all natives of the warm parts of Africa and America; and must always be kept in pots, which are to remain constantly in stoves in this country. They are propagated by seeds, which are annually imported hither from Africa and America. They are to be sown half an inch deep in pots of light rich earth, which are then to be plunged in the bark-bed of the stove; and when the plants are two inches high, they are to be separated into small pots, plunging them also in the bark-bed, giving them frequent waterings, and as they increase in growth shifting them into larger pots. The inhabitants of Malabar make sheaths of the wood, for swords and knives. They use the same, together with the bark, in washing a fort of garments which they call sarafas; and make of the flowers the confection caryl. The leaves pulverised and boiled with the mature cocoa-nut, consume venereal buboes, and ease pains in the bones; bruised and applied to the temples, they cure the cephalaea and ulcers; mixed with the sugar called jagra, they mitigate pains in the belly, especially in women; and the same effect follows from the use of the bark levigated with vinegar, or swallowing the kernel stripped of its red pellicle. The juice of the leaves taken with oil mitigates venereal pains; drank with an infusion of rice, it stops fluxes; made into a cataplasm with the leaves of betel, it destroys worms in old ulcers; and worked with oil, it cures the pfora and itch.