Word.ws English Dictionary

usnea

usnea noun: any lichen of the genus Usnea.

usnea: any lichen of the genus Usnea
Image: Butterfly voyages, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

usnea (plural usneas or usneae)

  1. Any lichen of the genus Usnea.
    • The plantlike result of a symbiotic association between algae and fungi, usnea lichen is an important and versatile natural medicine that demands a place in these pages.1997, Gregory L. Tilford, Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West, page 148
    • In Latin the various species of usnea are called Usnea barbata, U. longissima, U. hirta, U. florida, U. ceratina, and U. dasypoga. Because of its appearance the common name for usnea is Old Man's Beard. The Dakota called usnea Chan wiziye.2006, Stephen Harrod Buhner, Sacred Plant Medicine: The Wisdom in Native American Herbalism, page 133
    Synonyms:
    old man's beard

Synonyms of usnea

Forms of usnea

pluralusneas
pluralusneae

Origin of usnea

Borrowed from translingual Usnea, from Arabic أُشْنَة (ʔušna, “moss”).

Words formed from usnea

Questions about usnea

What does usnea mean?
Usnea means any lichen of the genus Usnea.
What part of speech is usnea?
Usnea is a noun.
What is the plural of usnea?
The plural of usnea is usneas.

Words near usnea in the dictionary

  1. USMLE
  2. USMNT
  3. USMS
  4. USN
  5. USNA
  6. usnea
  7. usneae
  8. usneas
  9. usneoid
  10. usness
  11. USNH

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: usnea (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:

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