Calamus

1. n. The horny basal portion of a feather; the barrel or quill.
2. n. The indian cane, a plant of the Palm family. It furnishes the common rattan. See Rattan, and Dragon’s blood.
3. n. A species of Acorus (A. calamus), commonly called calamus, or sweet flag. The root has a pungent, aromatic taste, and is used in medicine as a stomachic; the leaves have an aromatic odor, and were formerly used instead of rushes to strew on floors.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.