turtlehead
English
Etymology
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English turtlehead
From turtle + head, from the shape of the flower. Influenced by the taxonomic name Chelone.
Noun
turtlehead (countable and uncountable, plural turtleheads)
- A white turtlehead, an American perennial herb (Chelone glabra) with white flowers.
- 1833, Horton Howard, An Improved System of Botanic Medicine[1], volume 2, page 231:
- ᴄʜᴇʟᴏɴᴀ ɢʟᴀʙʀᴀ. Common Names—Snake-head, Balmony, Turtle-head, Turtle-bloom, Shell-flower, Bitter-herb, &c.
- 1925, Mary Vaux Walcott, North American Wild Flowers, page 259:
- The creamy color of the flower, sometimes tinged with pink, turns to brown as it fades. Turtlehead is easily cultivated and forms a desirable addition to the wildflower garden.
- Any of various other members of the genus Chelone.
- 1859, Asa Gray, “Lesson 13”, in First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology[2], page 94:
- […] [T]he fifth stamen, which is altogether missing in Gerardia and most others, appears in the Figwort as a little scale, and in Pentstemon and Turtlehead as a sort of filament without any anther;—a thing of no use whatever to the plant, but very interesting to the botanist, since it completes the symmetry of the blossom.
Synonyms
- (Chelone glabra): balmony, shell flower, snakehead
Categories:
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *kap- (head)
- English terms calqued from Translingual
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *kap- (seize)
- English terms derived from Translingual
- English compound terms
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- en:Plantain family plants