grown in many varieties for their brightly colored foliage; widely cultivated as a houseplant
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tropical Asiatic shrub; source of croton oil
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Croton \Cro"ton\ (kr?"t?n), n. [Gr. ????, prop., a tick, which the seed of the croton resembles.] (Bot.) A genus of euphorbiaceous plants belonging to tropical countries.
{Croton oil} (Med.), a viscid, acrid, brownish yellow oil obtained from the seeds of {Croton Tiglium}, a small tree of the East Indies. It is a most powerful drastic cathartic, and is used externally as a pustulant.