A tree having or bearing thorns; in Great Britain, usually a hawthorn tree.

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1483.  Cath. Angl., 384/1. A Thorne tree, mespula, rampnus.

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1850.  R. G. Cumming, Hunter’s Life S. Afr. (1902), 60/1. A clump of tangled thorn-trees.

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1856.  Stanley, Sinai & Pal., x. 363. The ‘Nabk,’ or thorn-tree,… here breaks out along the hill-sides in thick jungles.

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1895.  Atlantic Monthly, July, 61. The thorn-tree before me was perhaps fifteen feet high.

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  b.  attrib. Thorn-tree fly, a March trout-fly, a thorn-fly or HAWTHORN-FLY, q.v.

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1676.  Cotton, Walton’s Angler, II. vii. (1881), 285. There is also for this month [March], a fly, called the Thorn-tree fly; the dubbing is … black, mixed with eight or ten hairs of Isabella-coloured mohair.

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1787.  Best, Angling, 99. March. The Thorn or Hawthorn Tree fly.

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1909.  Westm. Gaz., 4 May, 2/3. Scant thorn-tree shade where white sheep flock.

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