Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) vegetable, term originally used for any plant, now the name for many food plants, most of them annuals, and for their edible parts. There is no clear botanical distinction between vegetables and fruit...

(Encyclopedia) Williamson, Oliver Eaton, 1932–2020, American economist, b. Superior, Wis., Ph.D. Carnegie-Mellon Univ., 1963. He served on the faculties of Univ. of California, Berkeley (1963–65, 1988–2004, em...

(Encyclopedia) San Luis Obispo săn lo͞oˈĭs ōbĭsˈpō [key], city (1990 pop. 41,958), seat of San Luis Obispo co., S Calif., near San Luis Obispo Bay; inc. 1856. Printing and publishing, machinery, medical good...

(Encyclopedia) Tarski, Alfred tärˈskē [key], 1901–83, Polish-American mathematician and philosopher, Ph.D. Univ. of Warsaw, 1924, b. Alfred Teitelbaum, changed his named 1923. He lectured at Warsaw until 1939, ...

(Encyclopedia) rancheria ränchāˈrēä [key], type of communal settlement formerly characteristic of the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, Mexico, and of various small Native American groups of the SW United States, especi...

(Encyclopedia) redbud or Judas tree, name for trees and shrubs of the genus Cercis, handsome plants of the family Leguminosae (pulse family), covered along the branches in the early spring with deep rose or (rarely)...

(Encyclopedia) buckthorn, common name for some members of the Rhamnaceae, a family of woody shrubs, small trees, and climbing vines widely distributed throughout the world. The buckthorns (several species of the gen...

(Encyclopedia) Goldschmidt, Richard Benedikt, 1878–1958, American zoologist and geneticist, b. Germany, Ph.D. Univ. of Heidelberg, 1902. Goldschmidt taught at the Univ. of Munich (1903–14) and was at the Kaiser ...

(Encyclopedia) Gregg, Josiah, 1806–50, American trader and historian of the Santa Fe Trail, b. Overton co., Tenn. He moved with his family to Illinois (1809) and then to Missouri (1812). He gained wide knowledge f...

(Encyclopedia) lignum vitae lĭgˈnəm vīˈtē [key] [Lat.,=wood of life], tropical American evergreen tree of the genus Guaiacum. The hard, dense, and extremely durable wood, obtained chiefly from G. officinale an...