tupelo (tupelo)

[Amer. Ind.] One of several species of Ny a, most commonly N. syl vatic a ( N.multiflora ), the pepperidge, sour-gum, or black-gum. See black - gum, and cut under Ny a. The sour tupelo is N. cap it at a, otherwise called gopher - plum and Ogeechee lime. (See lime3.) The large tupelo, cotton or tupelo-gum, is N. uniflora, a large tree of deep swamps and river-bottoms in the southern United States. Its wood, which is light, soft, and unwedgeable, is used in turnery, largely for woodenware, for wooden shoes, etc.; that of the root is used for the floats of nets. Sargent.-Tupelo tent, a small rod of tupelo which is inserted into the mouth of the womb when it is desired to dilate this pa age. The tupelo effects this by increasing in size through absorption of the fluids of the parts. Tupistra (tū-pis'trä), n. [NL. (Ker, 1814), so called from the shape of the stigma; erect growing from a thick rhizome which flowers are se ile, crowded between smaller green or scarious bracts upon an erect or recurved scape. They are known as mallet -flower. T. squalid a, the original species, and T. nutans, the nodding mallet-flower, are sometimes cultivated under gla .