Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A perennial herb (Menyanthes trifoliata) native to the Northern Hemisphere and having trifoliate leaves and clusters of white, pink, or purplish flowers.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Same as
bog-bean .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- (Bot.) A perennial plant (
Menyanthes trifoliata ) of Europe and America which grows in moist and boggy places, having racemes of white, reddish, or purplish flowers and intensely bitter trifoliate leaves, sometimes used in medicine; marsh trefoil; -- called alsobog bean . It often roots at the water margin and spreads across the surface.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Menyanthes trifoliata , a plant withracemes of white or reddish flowers and intensely bitter leaves, sometimes used in medicine.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun perennial plant of Europe and America having racemes of white or purplish flowers and intensely bitter trifoliate leaves; often rooting at water margin and spreading across the surface
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Other important plant species in the freshwater habitats include pondweed (Potamogeton crispus), water milfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum), tape-grass (Ottelia alismoides), and buckbean (Nymphoides peltata).
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William Hooker found the buckbean very plentiful in Iceland, and says that where it occurs it is of great use to travellers over the morasses, for they are aware that the thickly entangled roots make a safe bed under the soft morass for them to pass over.
Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children W. Houghton
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But the crowning floral honour of the brook garden is in the irises set in and beside its waters, chief among which are the glorious irises of Japan -- purple, blue, rose-colour, and crimson -- the pink English flowering rush, big white mocassin flowers, New Zealand flax, and pink buckbean, and bog arum.
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Pinus abies, and the buckbean, or Menyanthes trifoliata, etc., besides the common birch and other European plants.
The Antiquity of Man Charles Lyell 1836
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Cranberry bogs harbor a range of species that are normally associated with more northerly ecoregions such as cranberry (Vaccinium spp.), blueberry (Vaccinium spp.), bog rosemary (Andromeda glaucophylla), buckbean (Menyanthes trifoliata), northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), fisher (Martes pennanti), and black-billed magpie (Pica pica).
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a lovely plant; it is the buckbean or marshtrefoil, and generally grows in some boggy spot, such as this.
Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children W. Houghton
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