camalote

plural camalotes

1. A floating island composed of Pontederia plants.

   A camalote is a floating island of river plants often with enough root structure to support one or more men. Later in the war, the Paraguayans camou- flaged canoes as camalotes so as to approach the Brazilian fleet undetected.

   1974, Loren Scott Patterson, The War of the Triple Alliance: Paraguayan Offensive Phase - a Military History

   2 more examples

   About ten A.M. another camalote of very large size, apparently two acres in extent, floated into the midst of us. […] There islands are sometimes very compact, and capable of sustaining a considerable weight. There is a well-authenticated story of two tigers being drifted down upon a camalote as far as Monte Video, where the beasts created great alam.

   1848, Lauchlan Bellingham Mackinnon, Steam Warfare in the Parana: A Narrative of Operations, by the Combined Squadrons of England and France, in Forcing a Passage Up that River, page 285

   […] a camalote, a floating island composed of pleustonic vegetation. Sampling was from a boat. At each sample site, five plants at the periphery of the stand were vigorously shaken in a 200 μm mesh-width handnet partially immersed in[…]

   1998, International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology, Proceedings