tappan

plural tappans

1. An emergent tropical rainforest tree, Koompassia excelsa, family Fabaceae, of Southeast Asia.

   The honey-bee of Borneo very generally hangs its combs under the branches of the Tappan, a tree which towers above all others in the forest, and whose smooth cylindrical trunk often rises a hundred feet without a branch.

   1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 125

   1 more example

   Two minutes more, and the top-knot of the lofty tappan before the house was thrashing the reeds out of the thatch—there was a shriek as of a thousand buzz-saws—a fusillade of branches and pebbles—and the squall had gone yelling away into the east.

   1894 January 6, The Bulletin, Sydney, page 22, column 2

plural Tappans

1. A surname.