Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A large rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) of eastern North America, having large glossy leaves and flowers with a white to rose-pink, bell-shaped corolla with green spots.
  • noun Any of several similar rhododendrons.
  • noun Chiefly British A fireweed.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A name of several plants.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete, U.S., U.S. the oleander.
  • noun U.S. Any shrub of the genus Rhododendron.
  • noun An herb (Epilobium spicatum) with showy purple flowers, common in Europe and North America; -- called also great willow herb.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun oleander
  • noun rosebay willowherb

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an ornamental but poisonous flowering shrub having narrow evergreen leaves and clusters of fragrant white to pink or red flowers: native to East Indies but widely cultivated in warm regions
  • noun late-spring-blooming rhododendron of eastern North America having rosy to pink-purple flowers

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Even in the really bright pink flowers such as rosebay willowherb, blue sneaks in to add a trace of purple as it does in wild thyme and centaury.

    Country diary: Wenlock Edge 2010

  • Even in the really bright pink flowers such as rosebay willowherb, blue sneaks in to add a trace of purple as it does in wild thyme and centaury.

    Environment news, comment and analysis from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk 2010

  • In the exposed plantation known as Sentry Hill Wood, beech leaves are brown and the patch of Lloyd George's ground left as downland when a tax was imposed on reclamation is covered in rank bracken and bedraggled rosebay willowherb interspersed with gorse, rowan, willow and oak.

    Country diary: St Mellion, Tamar Valley 2011

  • Now is the time for the towering spikes of purple foxgloves and pink rosebay willow-herb.

    Plantwatch: a great year for wildflowers 2011

  • Hence why, 12 hours later, I'm learning to pick nettles, hogweed, and rosebay willowherbs in a thicket on Hampstead Heath.

    Eating for £1 a day 2011

  • In the waste ground by the edge of Hollingside wood tall spikes of rosebay willowherb, tipped with the last of their purple flowers, were releasing their downy seeds.

    Country Diary: Durham city 2011

  • As I understand it, there is a native species of rosebay willowherb and a North American species.

    High summer Carla 2008

  • Hearty yellow-flowered gorse poked through those sweeping fans as though caring little for the prerogatives of royalty, and rosebay crept up the border of the planting in low growing mats.

    Stormblade Berberick, Nancy Varian 1988

  • Hornfel touched a finger to one of the rosebay™s delicate flowers.

    Stormblade Berberick, Nancy Varian 1988

  • Vegetables and fruit-trees were flanked by herbaceous borders running down to a tarred fence at the end, where a curtain of giant convolvulus, drooping over a mass of mallow and foxglove, borage and rosebay willow-herb, suggested that Miss Barnslow had not yet got round to the task of civilizing this corner of the estate.

    Crime On the Coast Carr, John Dickson 1984

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