luxuriance

I put on his flannel shirt -- it fell down to my toes, like a bedgown; his drawers -- and they flowed in Turkish luxuriance over my feet.

Rambles Beyond Railways; or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot Wilkie Collins 1856

How different in their free-born luxuriance from the dusty and city-prisoned elms and willows she had left!

Queechy 1854

Tame, cold, dispassionate minds resemble barren lands; warm, animated ones, rich ground, which, if properly cultivated, yields the noblest fruit; but, if neglected, from its luxuriance is most productive of weeds.

The History of Emily Montague 1769

No doubt, with sufficient drainage, and great care in cultivation, and the tea plant might be made to exist in such a situation; but I am convinced it would never grow with that luxuriance which is necessary in order to render it a profitable crop.

The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c. P. L. Simmonds

Then I climbed the long street over the rock and cobble stones between walls half green with pellitory, houses with high gables and rough wooden balconies where geraniums shone in the shadow, and from which the trailing plants hung low in that supreme luxuriance which is the beginning of their death.

Two Summers in Guyenne Edward Harrison Barker 1885

But ancient ruins are almost always found to be thus covered with plants which grow upon them, even at a very great height above the ground, with a luxuriance which is very surprising to those who witness this phenomenon for the first time.

Rollo on the Rhine Jacob Abbott 1841

Louisville is the largest city in Kentucky; the country about is very rich, and every thing vegetable springs up with a luxuriance which is surprising.

Diary in America, Series One Frederick Marryat 1820

And you can easily say things like that, given the luxuriance of youth.

a walk on the moon Jerry Ratch 2011

The luxuriance of the grebe's summer headdress seems somehow out of step with the frigid greyness of this landscape.

Country diary: Claxton, Norfolk 2011

Vice thrived in its most sordid and elegant forms, from squalid opium dens and off-the-street brothels… to the decorum and plush luxuriance of the so-called French restaurants.

Frank Norris 2010