champac

• champak, champaka

From Sanskrit चम्पक (campaka). Compare with Hindi चंपक (campak).

champac (plural champacs)

1. A type of Asian tree with fragrant blossoms, Magnolia champaca
   • 1901, M.P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud‎:

     And now, as to that blossomy peach-scent--even while some floes were yet around me--I was just like some fantastic mariner, who, having set out to search for Eden and the Blessed Islands, finds them, and balmy gales from their gardens come out, while he is yet afar, to meet him with their perfumes of almond and champac, cornel and jasmin and lotus.

   • 1900, Epiphanius Wilson, Hindu Literature‎:

     The bamboo boughs that sway and swing / 'Neath bulbuls as the south wind blows, / The mango-tope, a close dark ring, / Home of the rooks and clamorous crows, / The champac, bok, and South-sea pine, / The nagessur with pendant flowers / Like ear-rings--and the forest vine / That clinging over all, embowers […]

   • 1881, Annie Allnut Brassey, A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam'‎:

     There were magnolias, shaddocks, hibiscus, the almost too fragrant yellow-flowered champac, sacred to Hindoo mythology; nutmeg and cinnamon trees, tea and coffee, and every other conceivable plant and tree, growing in the wildest luxuriance.

   • 1860, James Emerson Tennent, Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and‎:

     From the wood of the champac the images of Buddha are carved for the temples.