Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Plural form of
mayapple .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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These guys were hiding under some rose bushes and mayapples in an undisclosed forest location when my friend Emily and I stumbled across them.
Archive 2009-05-01 weakyknee 2009
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The understory was full of flowers, including white triliums wherever a break in the canopy let morning light down into the cover of last year's dead leaves, and a profusion of mayapples too small yet to have any fruit tucked under their umbrellas.
ccfinlay: How I Spent My Spring Break ccfinlay 2006
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Despite their toxic nature, mayapples were valued by Native Americans for their medicinal uses, and were used - in very small quantities - as a laxative.
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In some places, mayapples blanket an entire hillside - a mass of gentle green petals, all curved downward and protecting their waxy white flowers.
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Some tried to commit suicide by ingesting the plant and the Menominees boiled mayapples and splashed the liquid on their potato plants as an insecticide.
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But lest the everyday miracles of budding roses and blooming irises and a flower garden waking up from a long winter's nap go unnoticed in all the flurry, my husband is good to take my hand and slow me down for a bit with a little ramble through the woods to admire the bluebells we planted last fall or the almost mystical reappearance of the mayapples under the oak trees.
Young Ladies Christian Fellowship Gretchen Acheson 2009
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A devil’s paradise, thought Ruth, thinking of the carpet of mayapples they had waded through, and the nodding monkshood, leaning over the pool.
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The brightness of the afternoon sun hurt Ruth’s eyes as she stepped into the clearing that surrounded the cabin, but the cloud of bees led her away up into the woods, where chestnuts and tulip poplars sifted the sunlight so that only the thinnest, finest beams made it down to dance on the umbrella leaves of the mayapples carpeting the woodland floor.
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