bird's-foot

British  

noun

1. a European leguminous plant, Ornithopus perpusillus , with small red-veined white flowers and curved pods resembling a bird's claws

2. any of various other plants whose flowers, leaves, or pods resemble a bird's foot or claw

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Example Sentences

Heading back toward Broadway, we came upon a giant mural on the side of an apartment building featuring male and female hooded warblers perched on a bird’s-foot violet plant.

From Washington Post • Jul. 7, 2022

By varying the steepness of the table, they created miniature mountain streams disgorging into fan-shaped flood plains and bird's-foot deltas.

From Science Magazine • May 13, 2021

Numerous names have been suggested by their fancied resemblance to the feet, hoofs, and tails of animals and birds; as, for instance, colt's-foot, crow-foot, bird's-foot trefoil, horse-shoe vetch, bull-foot, and the vervain, nicknamed frog's-foot.

From The Folk-lore of Plants by Dyer, T. F. Thiselton (Thomas Firminger Thiselton)

Then there was short elastic wiry grass and orange-yellow bird’s-foot trefoil.

From Patience Wins War in the Works by Fenn, George Manville

Through this belt the actual road meanders; the sward on each side is now bathed in wild flowers, conspicuous among which are patches of the yellow bird’s-foot trefoil.

From The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan by Stables, Gordon