lespedeza

American  

[les-pi-dee-zuh] / ˌlɛs pɪˈdi zə /

noun

1. any shrub or herb belonging to the genus Lespedeza, of the legume family, having trifoliolate leaves and lavender flowers, grown for forage, soil improvement, etc.

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Etymology

Origin of lespedeza

< New Latin (1803), after V. M. de Zespedez (misread as Lespedez ), 18th-century Spanish governor of East Florida

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

lespedeza

Worse still, lespedeza, a woody legume from Asia, had spread rapidly, filling lopped-off mountains with thickets of prickly, inedible stalks.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 13, 2020

Candidates include butterfly bush, asters, caryopteris, lespedeza and perovskia.

From Washington Post ● May 19, 2015

To help birds feed but escape predators, Webb has planted bicolor lespedeza and browntop millet food plots bordering thick cover.

From Time Magazine Archive

Rival trainers unabashedly gawk when Morton and his pointers begin to hunt for quail in the South's winter-barren cornfields and amid the tufts of sedge and lespedeza.

From Time Magazine Archive

Together with the wistaria, the lotus, the iris, the lespedeza, and a few others, these take the place which is occupied in the West by the rose, the lily, the violet, etc.

From Japanese Literature Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical Poetry and Drama of Japan by Wilson, Epiphanius