previous next

Rat-tan.

(Malay, rotan.) The stem of a cane of the genus Calamus, especially used for making splints for chair seats and backs.

It abounds in Southern Asia in moist situations, and the various species are used for banks for sails; cables, sometimes as much as 42 inches round: cords, withes, and walking-sticks; also for making splints for baskets and brooms, fish-weirs, hurdles, hoops, carriage-seats, and many other purposes. The larger varieties grow to a size of 3 inches diameter, and to a hight of nearly 100 feet. It is cylindrical, jointed, and destitute of branches.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Asia (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: