mesquite

plural mesquites · alternative dated mesquit · alternative obsolete mezquit · alternative obsolete mezquite

1. Any of several deciduous trees of the genus Prosopis found in America, and used as forage, which have long, beige seed and bean pods which may be dried and ground into a sweet, nutty flour.

   Between these canyons the river has a low but rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scattered here and there, and a chaparral of mesquite bearing beans and thorns.

   1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 20

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   […] and no botanist could for a moment fail to recognize this fact, especially as just beyond its banks there is growing on every hand the mesquite, the everywhere-present species of the Lower Sonoran zone.

   1909, Volney Morgan Spalding, Distribution and movements of desert plants

2. The wood of these trees, used for smoking food, or charcoal made from this wood.
3. Country or land dominated by mesquite trees.

   Tucson is situated in beautiful mesquite riverbed country, overlooked by the snowy Catalina range.

   1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC

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   Southward and in the very center of the plain is La Mesa, hidden in the mesquite and with splendid, typically dug, wells.

   1900, David Prescott Barrows, The ethno-botany of the Coahuilla Indians of Southern California

1. An unincorporated community in Imperial County, California.
2. A city in Clark County, Nevada.
3. A census-designated place in New Mexico.
4. A city in Dallas County and Kaufman County, Texas; a suburb of Dallas.
5. A ghost town in Borden County, Texas.