Geranium, from the long, slender beak of their fruit. See Geranium.' name='description'> crane's-bill - definition and meaning

Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The popular name of plants of the genus Geranium, from the long, slender beak of their fruit. See Geranium.
  • noun A pair of long-nosed pincers used by surgeons.

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

  • noun (Bot.) The geranium; -- so named from the long axis of the fruit, which resembles the beak of a crane.
  • noun (Surg.) A pair of long-beaked forceps.

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

  • noun any of numerous geraniums of the genus Geranium
  • noun any of numerous geraniums of the genus Geranium

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • As the wind subsided, the descending scales of willow warbler song began again and bumblebees emerged from shelter to feed, shaking raindrops from the last of the bluebells and newly opened wood crane's-bill flowers, a floral succession that marks the transition from spring into summer in these woodlands.

    Country diary: Blanchland, Northumberland-Durham border 2011

  • As the wind subsided, the descending scales of willow warbler song began again and bumblebees emerged from shelter to feed, shaking raindrops from the last of the bluebells and newly opened wood crane's-bill flowers, a floral succession that marks the transition from spring into summer in these woodlands.

    Country diary: Blanchland, Northumberland-Durham border 2011

  • _A_, wild crane's-bill _Geranium_ (_Geraniaceæ_), × ½.

    Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany For High Schools and Elementary College Courses Douglas Houghton Campbell

  • Beyond the golf-links the ground breaks into sand-hills, all hillocks and hollows of pure sand, soft and yielding, dented by every footstep, set with rushes and spangled with crane's-bill, yellow bedstraw, tiny purple scented thyme-flowers, and a kind of spurge.

    Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts Rosalind Northcote

  • Here belong the geraniums (Fig.  107, _A_), represented by the wild geraniums and crane's-bill, and the very showy geraniums (_Pelargonium_) of the gardens.

    Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany For High Schools and Elementary College Courses Douglas Houghton Campbell

  • The crane's-bill has a word for the gnat; the helleborine fills her goblet only for the wasp; the yellow iris calls to the honey-fly; the meadow saffron's veined cup is for the bee.

    The Spring of Joy: A Little Book of Healing 1917

  • _Azalea_, _Camellia_, and even such types of garden-plants as the meadow crane's-bill (_Geranium pratensev) have striped varieties.

    Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation Hugo de Vries 1891

  • Our common wild crane's-bill, which also has lost the power to fertilize itself, not only ripens first the outer, then the inner, row of anthers, but actually drops them off after their pollen has been removed, to overcome the barest chance of self-fertilization as the stigmas become receptive.

    Wild Flowers Worth Knowing Neltje Blanchan 1891

  • Then there are patches of candytuft running from white into pink, crimson flowers of the little crane's-bill, and spurges whose floral leaves are now losing their golden green and taking a hue of fiery brown.

    Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine Edward Harrison Barker 1885

  • And so it came to pass that I forsook the place, and by climbing a little staircase cut in the rock, against which the house was built, reached a cavern far above the roof and found at last my ideal writing-place upon the ledge in front of it, where the mallow and the crane's-bill crept over a patch of turf.

    Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine Edward Harrison Barker 1885

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