Emily Dickinson Lexicon

VOM'IC-NUT, n. [L. vomica, emetic, and nux, a nut.]

The seed of the Strychnos nux vomica, a medium sized tree growing in various parts of India. The fruit is of the size of a small orange, and of the same color, covered with a tough rind, and filled with a pulp, in which the seeds are imbedded. Almost all parts of this tree are medicinal, but more especially the seeds. They are not emetic however, as their name implies. The snake-wood does not belong to this tree, as some have asserted, but to Strychnos colubrina, another species of the same genus.