Dictionary:

ailanthus

  (ā-lăn'thəs)

Any of several deciduous Asian trees of the genus Ailanthus, especially the tree-of-heaven.

[New Latin Ailanthus, genus name, alteration (influenced by Greek anthos, flower) of Ambonese ai lanto, tree of heaven : ai, tree + lanto, heaven.]

Although the ailanthus is the Tree of Heaven, it also grows in Brooklyn. It is prized for its shade and condemned as a weed, valued for its medicinal properties and shunned for its smell, admired for its looks and cursed for its messy winged seeds. Thriving on city streets where other trees wither, with an exotic, almost tropical look, the ailanthus has been called the "tenement palm."

The tree is said to have almost heavenly curative powers. Leaves, fruits, bark, and roots are variously reported to be remedies for asthma, cancer, diarrhea, dysentery, dysmenorrhea, dysuria, epilepsy, eruption, fever, gonorrhea, hematochezia, leucorrhea, malaria, metrorrhagia, premature ejaculation, sores, spasms, spermatorrhea, stomachic tumors, and wet dreams.

It can also be used for wood or for raising silkworms, a thriving industry in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, around the turn of the last century. Caterpillars of the cynthia moth fed on ailanthus leaves and wove cocoons that were processed into silk in Paterson, New Jersey. The ailanthus was the centerpiece of Betty Smith's 1912 book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and of the 1945 movie based on the book, which won an Academy Award for James Dunn as best supporting actor.

Ailanthus glandulosa, to give it its botanical title, is an import from Asia. Missionaries brought it to Europe in 1751 and to the United States in 1784. Our use of the name ailanthus is attested as early as 1807. Although the tree is native to China, the name comes from Ambonese, a dialect of the Malay language spoken by about 200,000 people on Ambon and neighboring islands in Indonesia. Ambonese belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. From Ambonese we also have the name amboyna (1879) for a tropical tree with reddish wood that we also know by the Burmese name padauk (1839).

For more information on ailanthus, visit Britannica.com.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: any of several deciduous Asian trees of the genus Ailanthus