ribbon cane

ribbon cane noun: sugar cane; specifically, striped varieties of sugar cane grown in the southern United States.

Noun

ribbon cane (countable and uncountable, plural ribbon canes)

(Southern US) Sugar cane; specifically, striped varieties of sugar cane grown in the southern United States.
- The ribbon cane […] is called by the French rouge et d’or, being longitudinally striped yellow and deep red. It grows as high as the Bourbon, but is slenderer, and of course resists wind less.1803, Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, London: Longman and Rees, Volume 2, Letter 18, p. 336
- Say, Matt, gimme a jint or two of dat green cane—dis ribbon cane is hard.1930, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Mule Bone, HarperCollins, published 1991, act I, page 49

The voice she heard was slowly rough and delicately brutal, like stones being rattled in a can of ribbon cane syrup.1966, J. J. Phillips, chapter 1, in Mojo Hand, Berkeley: City Miner Books, published 1985, page 8:
His knees clacked together like stalks of ribbon cane rattling in a high wind.1994, Joe R. Lansdale, “Bubba Ho-Tep”, in The Best of Joe R. Lansdale, San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, published 2010, pages 51–52:

plural	ribbon canes

What does ribbon cane mean?: Ribbon cane means sugar cane; specifically, striped varieties of sugar cane grown in the southern United States.
How do you use ribbon cane in a sentence?: The voice she heard was slowly rough and delicately brutal, like stones being rattled in a can of ribbon cane syrup.
What part of speech is ribbon cane?: Ribbon cane is a noun.
What is the plural of ribbon cane?: The plural of ribbon cane is ribbon canes.

Adapted from Wiktionary: ribbon cane (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “ribbon cane.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ribbon_cane. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.