showy orchis

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.

Word History and Origins

Origin of showy orchis¹

An Americanism dating back to 1855–60

Example Sentences

These are so modest, one would hardly suspect they belonged to the showy orchis family.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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