camalote

English

Etymology

From Spanish camalote, from Classical Nahuatl camalotl.

Noun

camalote (plural camalotes)

1. A floating island composed of Pontederia plants.
   • 1848, Lauchlan Bellingham Mackinnon, Steam Warfare in the Parana: A Narrative of Operations, by the Combined Squadrons of England and France, in Forcing a Passage Up that River, page 285:

     About ten A.M. another camalote of very large size, apparently two acres in extent, floated into the midst of us. […] There islands are sometimes very compact, and capable of sustaining a considerable weight. There is a well-authenticated story of two tigers being drifted down upon a camalote as far as Monte Video, where the beasts created great alam.

   • 1974, Loren Scott Patterson, The War of the Triple Alliance: Paraguayan Offensive Phase - a Military History:

     A camalote is a floating island of river plants often with enough root structure to support one or more men. Later in the war, the Paraguayans camou- flaged canoes as camalotes so as to approach the Brazilian fleet undetected.

   • 1998, International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology, Proceedings:

     […] a camalote, a floating island composed of pleustonic vegetation. Sampling was from a boat. At each sample site, five plants at the periphery of the stand were vigorously shaken in a 200 μm mesh-width handnet partially immersed in […]

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl camalotl.

Noun

camalote m (plural camalotes)

1. Pontederia crassipes (a tropical aquatic plant from South America, in the family Pontederiaceae, that appears to form floating islands)

Further reading

• “camalote”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10