Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any of several flowering plants in the genus Epilobium of the family Onagraceae.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

willow +‎ herb

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Examples

  • In the exposed plantation known as Sentry Hill Wood, beech leaves are brown and the patch of Lloyd George's ground left as downland when a tax was imposed on reclamation is covered in rank bracken and bedraggled rosebay willowherb interspersed with gorse, rowan, willow and oak.

    Country diary: St Mellion, Tamar Valley 2011

  • Then, with my senses as tickled as those of the forest bug, I had to turn away to groom willowherb cotton from my face.

    Country Diary: Durham city 2011

  • A forest bug, its angular armour trailing white down as it blundered among the seed pods, paused to groom willowherb cotton from its antennae.

    Country Diary: Durham city 2011

  • In the waste ground by the edge of Hollingside wood tall spikes of rosebay willowherb, tipped with the last of their purple flowers, were releasing their downy seeds.

    Country Diary: Durham city 2011

  • Even in the really bright pink flowers such as rosebay willowherb, blue sneaks in to add a trace of purple as it does in wild thyme and centaury.

    Country diary: Wenlock Edge 2010

  • Patches of willowherb suggest the acid soil of places where fire has left behind charcoal and wood ash.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • Patches of willowherb suggest the acid soil of places where fire has left behind charcoal and wood ash.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • Stony river shores are widespread, clothed only by pioneer species like willowherb Chamaenerion latifolium.

    Ilulissat Icefjord, Denmark-Greenland 2008

  • As I understand it, there is a native species of rosebay willowherb and a North American species.

    High summer Carla 2008

  • Forests of Rosebay willowherb usually thrown in for nowt, as well.

    Reannouncing money yet again 2008

Comments

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  • On top of us

    coiffures of willowherb fleece puff their last

    uphill.

               In Castle Gardens fermenting

    mulch in September, honey fumes throb

    a mirage of clipped lobelia beds

    where we loll and, ungrudgingly, limp with stooks

    too long left on fields beyond Broad Street, brown

    and burn out.

    - Peter Reading, For the Municipality's Elderly, from For the Municipality's Elderly, 1974

    June 22, 2008