Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A genus of dicotyledonous plants of the order Ericaceæ, the heath family, type of tribe Pyroleæ, characterized by racemed flowers with five converging petals, ten stamens with peculiar four-celled inverted anthers opening by pores, and a capsule opening from the base upward, with cobwebby margins. The 16 species are natives of the northern hemisphere, including 8 in the United States. They are smooth perennial herbs, sending out subterranean runners, and bearing radical or alternate long-stalked evergreen leaves, commonly entire and rounded, and an erect scape of bracted nodding flowers, which are white, yellowish, rose-colored, or purple. Several species are known in England and among American writers as wintergreen or false winter-green. P. rotundifolia, the larger wintergreen, is the most conspicuous species, a plant of both hemispheres, with thickish veiny round leaves, and commonly pure-white flowers, the stalk 6 to 12 inches high. It has been called
Indian lettuce and canker-lettuce. P. elliptica, a smaller American plant with thin elliptical leaves, is calledshin-leaf , a name also extended to the genus. - n. [lowercase] Any plant of the above genus.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any of several evergreen perennials of the genus Pyrola
Examples
“The flowers are thickish, something like the pyrola, and its manner of growth resembles the hyacinth, with bell-shaped flowers clustering along the upper part of the stem, and erect, pointed leaves.”
Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 An Illustrated Weekly
“Among the most desolate sandhills you may find in July acres of wax-white pyrola – like lilies of the valley splashed with pink – covering the plains between the lonely ridges of harsh, grey grass.”
“In shady corners, deeper in the wood, the fragrant pyrola lifted its scape of clustering bells, like a lily of the valley wandered to the forest.”
“Both the glossy pipsissima and the pretty spotted wintergreen, with its variegated leaves, are common here; so is the fragrant shin-leaf; and the one-flowered pyrola, rare in most parts of the country, is also found in our woods.”
“A plain brown carpet suits it best, with a modest figure of green -- preferably of evergreen -- woven into it; a tracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with here and there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola.”
“On the opener spots beneath the trees the ground is covered to a depth of two or three feet with mosses of indescribable freshness and beauty, a few dwarf conifers often planted on their rich furred bosses, together with pyrola, coptis, and Solomon's-seal.”
“A few are standing at an elevation of nearly three thousand feet; at twenty-five hundred feet, pyrola, veratrum, vaccinium, fine grasses, sedges, willows, mountain-ash, buttercups, and acres of the most luxuriant cassiope are in bloom.”
“Here I found many of my old favorites the heathworts -- kalmia, pyrola, chiogenes, huckleberry, cranberry, etc.”
“The family of the heath, cranberry, pyrola, Andromeda, and mountain-laurel -- how do these blossoms welcome their insect friends?”
“Pyrola secunda (one-sided pyrola), very common, Caucomgomoc.”
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