fire coral
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fire coral
n.
Any of various brownish-yellow reef-building colonial hydrozoans of the genus Millepora having an encrusting or branching calcareous skeleton and nematocysts that release stinging barbs. Also called millepore.
[From the painful stings.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.