showy orchis

American  

noun

1. a wild orchid, Orchis spectabilis, of eastern North America, having a spike of showy flowers, each with purple, pink, or white sepals and petals united into a galea and a white lip.

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Etymology

Origin of showy orchis

An Americanism dating back to 1855–60

Example Sentences

Quite different from the showy orchis, is this far more chaste showy lady's slipper which Dr. Gray has called "the most beautiful of the genus."

From Wild Flowers An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors by Blanchan, Neltje

Then she lifted by the root exquisite showy orchis, lavender-hooded, white-lipped, the tiniest plants she could select and set them around the edge.

From Michael O'Halloran by Stratton-Porter, Gene

In them we see a tendency to lengthen the pollen-masses into caudicles as the showy orchis, for example, has done.

From Wild Flowers An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors by Blanchan, Neltje

The males, whose faces are hairy where the females' are bare, and therefore not calculated to retain the sticky pollen masses, are not yet flying when the showy orchis blooms.

From Wild Flowers An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors by Blanchan, Neltje

In this showy orchis the nectar often rises an eighth of an inch in the tube, and sufficient pressure to cause a rupture will eject it a foot.

From Wild Flowers An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors by Blanchan, Neltje