champac

plural champacs · alternative champak · alternative champaka

1. A type of Asian tree with fragrant blossoms, Magnolia champaca

   From the wood of the champac the images of Buddha are carved for the temples.

   1860, James Emerson Tennent, Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and

   3 more examples

   And now, as to that blossomy peach-scent--even while some floes were yet around me--I was just like some fantastic mariner, who, having set out to search for Eden and the Blessed Islands, finds them, and balmy gales from their gardens come out, while he is yet afar, to meet him with their perfumes of almond and champac, cornel and jasmin and lotus.

   1901, M.P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud

   The bamboo boughs that sway and swing / 'Neath bulbuls as the south wind blows, / The mango-tope, a close dark ring, / Home of the rooks and clamorous crows, / The champac, bok, and South-sea pine, / The nagessur with pendant flowers / Like ear-rings--and the forest vine / That clinging over all, embowers […]

   1900, Epiphanius Wilson, Hindu Literature

   There were magnolias, shaddocks, hibiscus, the almost too fragrant yellow-flowered champac, sacred to Hindoo mythology; nutmeg and cinnamon trees, tea and coffee, and every other conceivable plant and tree, growing in the wildest luxuriance.

   1881, Annie Allnut Brassey, A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam'