Definition of "ocotillo" [ocotillo]

• A cactuslike tree (Fouquieria splendens) of Mexico and the southwest United States, having clusters of scarlet tubular flowers. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In his dusty yard stands his nephew, Ben Erskine, a boy just past the threshold of adolescence, tall for his age, as lean as one of the ocotillo wands that fence the yard."
• "I went to the spiky bushes—ocotillo, was that the name?"
• "We move through scrubby pines until we emerge onto a scene of blooming cacti, thorny ocotillo plants with licks of flame shooting from their tips, slithering lizards, and brown rabbits whose long ears have been adapted to circulate blood and keep them cool."