Man·na n.
1. Script. The food supplied to the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness of Arabia; hence, divinely supplied food.
2. Bot. A name given to lichens of the genus Lecanora, sometimes blown into heaps in the deserts of Arabia and Africa, and gathered and used as food; called also manna lichen.
3. Bot. & Med. A sweetish exudation in the form of pale yellow friable flakes, coming from several trees and shrubs and used in medicine as a gentle laxative, as the secretion of Fraxinus Ornus, and Fraxinus rotundifolia, the manna ashes of Southern Europe.
Note: ☞ Persian manna is the secretion of the camel's thorn (see Camel's thorn, under Camel); Tamarisk manna, that of the Tamarisk mannifera, a shrub of Western Asia; Australian, manna, that of certain species of eucalyptus; Briançon manna, that of the European larch.
Manna insect Zool, a scale insect (Gossyparia mannipara), which causes the exudation of manna from the Tamarix tree in Arabia.
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