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Orchis   Listen
proper noun
Orchis  n.  (pl. orchises)  
1.
(Bot.) A genus of endogenous plants growing in the North Temperate zone, and consisting of about eighty species. They are perennial herbs growing from a tuber (beside which is usually found the last year's tuber also), and are valued for their showy flowers. See Orchidaceous.
2.
(Bot.) Any plant of the same family with the orchis; an orchid. Note: The common names, such as bee orchis, fly orchis, butterfly orchis, etc., allude to the peculiar form of the flower.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Orchis" Quotes from Famous Books



... anemones, the orchis and trillium followed, then the yellow gerardias and the feathery purple pogonias, and finally the growing gleam of the golden-rods along the wood-side and the red umbels of the tall eupatoriums in the meadow announced the close ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... blue-eyed-Marys and blue-eyed grass side by side. He planted harebells; violets, blue, white, and yellow; wild geranium, cardinal-flower, columbine, pink snake's mouth, buttercups, painted trilliums, and orchis. Here were blood-root, moccasin-flower, hepatica, pitcher-plant, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and every other flower of the Limberlost that was in bloom or bore a bud presaging a flower. Every day saw the addition of new specimens. The place would have driven a botanist ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... filled with fibrous peat and sphagnum moss, largely mixed with charcoal, and abundant drainage ensured. They are propagated by dividing the root stocks, by separating the pseudo-bulbs, and, in case of the Dendrobiums, by cuttings. Orchis Foliosa (Leafy Orchis) may be grown in the open ground in good sandy loam. When once established it is best not to disturb it, but if needed it may be increased by division, after the tops have died down. Orchis Fusca (Brown Orchis) may likewise be planted in the open, in a sheltered position, ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... varieties of a singular green orchis, of a helmet shape, growing singly, on rather ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... Pelham woods Were full of doves that cooed at ease; The orchis filled her purple hoods For ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... the pretty and romantic inherent in the sex. In the spring she makes daisy chains, and winds them round the baby's neck; or with the stalks of the dandelion makes a chain several feet in length. She plucks great bunches of the beautiful bluebell, and of the purple orchis of the meadow; gathers heaps of the cowslip, and after playing with them a little while, they are left to wither in the dust by the roadside, while she is sent two or three miles with her father's dinner. She chants snatches of rural songs, and sometimes three or four together, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... puccoon, the beautiful though inodorous large white trillium, the delicate little corydalis, the star grass and the lady's slipper, all came within a week of their average time in spite of the cold, and the showy orchis was only just over into June. May added fifty-four new species of flowers to the April list, according to the record of a single observer whose leisure is limited. Those who added the forty odd May arrivals in bird land to their April lists may have no ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... resembling those we call Scotch burnet-leaved, with smooth shining leaves and few if any thorns; the blue flower called Pulmonaria or Lungwort, which I gathered in the Highlands, a sweet pea, with red blossoms and wreaths of lovely pale green foliage; a white orchis, the smell of which was quite delicious. Besides these were several small white and yellow flowers, with which I was totally unacquainted. The steward furnished me with a china jar and fresh water, so that I shall have the pleasure of a nosegay during the rest ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... vegetables, and wild fruits is too contemptible to deserve notice, if the 'sweet tea' whose virtues have been already recorded, and the common orchis root be excepted. That species of palm tree which produces the mountain cabbage is also found in most of the freshwater swamps, within six or seven miles of the coast. But is rarely seen farther inland. Even the banks of the Hawkesbury are unprovided with it. The inner part of the ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... of early bloom was there— The wind flow'r and the primrose pale, On bank or copse, and orchis rare, And cowslip ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... above it; hanging down their rich clusters of soft, pure, delicately-scented bells, from their pinky stems over their pale crinkled leaves, interspersed here and there with the deep purple of the fool's orchis, and the pale brown quiver-grass shaking out its trembling awns on their invisible stems. No flower is more delightful to gather than the cowslip, fragrant as the breath of a cow. And Aurelia darted about, piling the golden heap in her basket with untiring enjoyment; then, producing a tape, called ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... excellence, the poet of New England wild flowers, the yellow violet, the fringed gentian—to each of which he dedicated an entire poem—the orchis and the golden rod, "the aster in the wood and the yellow sunflower by the brook." With these his name will be associated as Wordsworth's with the daffodil and the lesser celandine, and Emerson's ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... way she had brought the bright blue speedwell; and clematis and bryony from the hedges, and from under them wild hyacinth and white campion and crane's-bill and primroses; and a meadow she had passed over gave her one or two pretty kinds of orchis, with daisies and cowslips, and grasses of various kinds. Eleanor was dressing these in flower baskets and dishes, in the open gallery that overlooked the meadows, when Mrs. Caxton passing through on her own business stopped a ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... doubt that Sarracenia and Darlingtonia may be added to this class, though the fact can hardly be considered as yet fully proved. There is a third class of plants which feed, as is now generally admitted, on the products of the decay of vegetable matter, such as the bird's-nest orchis (Neottia), &c. Lastly, there is the well-known fourth class of parasites (such as the mistletoe), which are nourished by the juices of living plants. Most, however, of the plants belonging to these four classes obtain part of their ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... great mountain world. His lessons may be read on the parterre, in the flowers of the purple magnolia, the deodar, the rhododendron. They may be found in the greenhouse, in the eccentric blossoms of the orchis, and curious form of the screw-pine—in the garden, in many a valuable root and fruit, destined ere long to become favourites of the dessert-table. It is ours to chronicle the story of an humble expedition of this kind—the adventures ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... trying to draw some flowers in a glass before her-a little purple, green-winged orchis, a cowslip, and a quivering dark-brown tuft of quaking grass. He came and ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sorts spring up on the cleared spots; the wide-spreading juniper, with its great prickly disks, covers the barer slopes; the willow herb, wild rose, clematis, violet, golden rod, aster, immortelle, arbutus, harebell, orchis, linnaea borealis, mitchella, dalibarda, wintergreen, ferns innumerable, and four species of running pine, all in due season, deck the waysides and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to insects and to other objects of natural history, and giving us interesting lessons about them. He delighted in natural scenery, especially distant views, and our walks and excursions were generally taken with some object, such as finding a bee-orchis or a rare plant, or exploring a new part of the country, or finding ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... Society's Transactions, 1833, expressed the belief that insects are necessary for the fructification of most orchids; and as far back as 1793, Christian Sprengel (in "The Newly Discovered Secret of Nature") gave an excellent account of the action of the several parts in the genus Orchis, having discovered that insects were necessary to remove the pollen masses. But the rationale of the process was not fully known until Darwin revealed it, and illuminated it by the light of natural selection. ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... flowers Are lying in their lowly beds with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the goldenrod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various

... wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... and the golden St. John's-wort. Then the unseen painter begins to mix the royal colour on his palette, and the red of the bee-balm catches your eye. If you are lucky, you may find, in midsummer, a slender fragrant spike of the purple-fringed orchis, and you cannot help finding the universal self-heal. Yellow returns in the drooping flowers of the jewel-weed, and blue repeats itself in the trembling hare-bells, and scarlet is glorified in the flaming robe of the cardinal-flower. ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... mowing of buttercups. "A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread," says Shelley, whose child lies between Keats and the pyramid. But a couple of active scythes are kept at work there summer and spring—not that the grass is long, for it is much overtopped by the bee-orchis, but because flowers are not to laugh within reach ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... here, springing from a bed of soft black mud, may be seen the pink Arethusa, fair as a rose leaf, the rare Calypso, the singular trilliums, the graceful adder's-tongue, and several species of the remarkable Cypripediums, or lady's-slipper. The beautiful spring orchis, the only orchis blossoming early, of most delicate white and purple tints, flourishes in damp, rich woods, and the Cornus, or dogwood, lights up the shady nooks ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... are the "Early Purple," which is abundant in our woods and pastures; the "Meadow Orchis"; and the "Spotted Orchis" of our heaths and commons. Less frequent are the "Bee Orchis," the "Butterfly Orchis," "Lady's Tresses," ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... valley now; creeping first for shelter shyly in the pause of the blustering wind. There the lambs came bleating to her, and the orchis lifted up, and the thin dead leaves of clover lay for the new ones to spring through. There the stiffest things that sleep, the stubby oak, and the saplin'd beech, dropped their brown defiance to her, and prepared for a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... parallel case of difficulty. Other cases could be given; for instance in plants, the very curious contrivance of a mass of pollen-grains, borne on a foot-stalk with a sticky gland at the end, is the same in Orchis and Asclepias,—genera almost as remote as possible amongst flowering plants. In all these cases of two very distinct species furnished with apparently the same anomalous organ, it should be observed that, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... season gives prominence to certain birds as to certain flowers. The Dandelion tells me when to look for the Swallow, and I know the Thrushes will not linger when the Orchis is in bloom. In my latitude, April is emphatically the month of the Robin. In large numbers they scour the fields and groves. You hear their piping in the meadow, in the pasture, on the hillside. Walk in the woods, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... old self does so as little as any one's,' Jasper could not help remarking to his sister; and Fly, pouncing on the first purple orchis spike ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... with a carpet of dog violets, growing in such profusion that they seemed to stretch in a vista of palest mauve into the distance. At close intervals among these grew glorious clumps of golden cowslips and purple meadow orchis, taller and finer by far than those in the meadows, and deliciously fragrant. In the swampy hollows were yellow marsh marigolds and blue forget-me-nots; on the drier soil of the rising bank the wild hyacinths were just shaking ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... is borne, Imaged in a watery glass, Where the sprays of fresh pink thorn Stoop to catch the boats that pass, Where the earliest orchis ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... Autumn the Manhood of the year? Is it not the ripest of the seasons? Do not proud flowers blossom,—the golden-rod, the orchis, the dahlia, and the bloody ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... like mid-day suns; Bindweed that runs; Butter and Eggs with the gaping lips, Sweet Hawthorn that hardens to haws, and Roses that die into hips; Lords-with-their-Ladies cheek-by-jowl, In purple surcoat and pale-green cowl; Family groups of Primroses fair; Orchids rare; Velvet Bee-orchis that never can sting, Butterfly-orchis which never takes wing, Robert-the-Herb with strange sweet scent, And crimson leaf when summer is spent: Clustering neighbourly, All this gay company, Said to us seemingly— 'Pluck, children, pluck! But leave some for good luck: Some for the ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... were thought to be like the human body, such as the mandrake and the ginseng; and these, it was said, must also be good for man. Again, amongst the orchis tribes, foreign specimens of which are often so valuable, we find very singular marks and shapes. England has a man orchis and a lady orchis, but neither of them really suits the name, for their flowers have rather the appearance of a ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... the orchard, all pink and white blossom. The trees that had been longest in bloom were white cascades of flower, others there were flushed like the cheek of a sleeping child, and some were still studded with rose-red buds. The grass was high and full of spotted orchis, and tall wild parsley spread its nets of lace almost abreast of the lowest boughs of blossom. So that the milkmaids stood embraced in meeting flowers, waist-deep in the orchard growth: all gowned in pink lawn with loose white ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... sweet-brier that climbed the solid stone posts of the gate-way, and clustered along the homely country stone wall. June blossomed in the yellow barberry by the road-side, and in the bright rhodora and the pale orchis in the dark woods. June sang in the whistle of the robin swinging on the elm and the cherry, and the gushing warble of the bobolink tumbling, and darting, and fluttering in the warm meadow. June twinkled in the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... basins of Sofia, Samakov and Kiustendil, (5) the Alpine and sub-Alpine regions of the Balkans and the southern mountain group. In the first-mentioned region the vegetation resembles that of the Russian and Rumanian steppes; in the spring the country is adorned with the flowers of the crocus, orchis, iris, tulip and other bulbous plants, which in summer give way to tall grasses, umbelliferous growths, dianthi, astragali, &c. In the more sheltered district south of the Balkans the richer vegetation recalls ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... this book [in the] beginning of 1860 (and then had some MS.), but owing to interruptions from my illness, and illness of children; from various editions of the 'Origin,' and Papers, especially Orchis book and Tendrils, I have spent four years and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... of trees and wild herbs. Even now these herbs and wild flowers of the monks grew here and there amongst the old ruins. Rosemary, lavender, hyssop, rue, silver and bronze lichens, pale rosy feather pink, a rare flower, yellow mullein, bee and fly orchis, and even the deadly nightshade, which was once so common at Furness Abbey. One day their provisions consisted of only two and a half loaves of bread, and a stranger passing by asked for a morsel. "Give him a loaf," said the Abbot; "the Lord will provide,"—and so they did. Marvellous to relate, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... a slender pedicel. At the base of the pedicel is a small viscid disc by which the pollinium is attached to the head or proboscis of one of the insects which visit the flower. Darwin demonstrated that in Orchis and other flowers the pedicel of the pollinium, after its removal from the anther, undergoes a curving movement. If the pollinium was originally vertical, after a time it assumed a horizontal position. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... or rarely on dry slopes. "Overlooked rather than rare." New England states and in general widely distributed. July. Often grows in company with the ragged orchis. The ancient ointment known as "adder's speare ointment" had the adder's tongue leaves as a chief ingredient, and is said to be still used for ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton

... spots occur on the west of the pass, a large Swertia, Caraganoid, Carices, etc. as before, Gentiana of Yonutt, a new Potentilla, Salix fruticosa; here also occurs the first Orchidea I have seen in Khorassan: it belongs to the tribe Orchis, but is out of flower. On the 1st of Sept., I re-crossed Hajeeguk, directing my way again into the snow ravine from the top of the pass, and found a number of plants, for which see Catalogue. A Campanula abundant about springs at 12,400 feet. The vegetation of the ravine close by ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... some writers have been too much inclined to attribute to "mimicry" any accidental resemblance between two species. How far such accidental resemblances may be carried is probably well illustrated by the bee, the spider, and the fly orchis of our own ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... only at the middle period of its flowering, that these three colours are highly distinguishable; as it advances, the brilliant orange of the top flowers dies away; the spots on the leaves also, which when the plant is young, give it the appearance of an orchis, as it advances into bloom become ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 3 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... lip-rings are small; the tattoo a mixture of Makoa and Waiyau. Fine blue and black beads are in fashion, and so are arm-coils of thick brass wire. Very nicely inlaid combs are worn in the hair; the inlaying is accomplished by means of a gum got from the root of an orchis called Nangazu. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... white moon daisies in the mist of the meadow Where the flowered grass scatters its seeds like spray, There are purple orchis by the wood-ways' shadow, There are pale dog-roses by the white highway; And the grass, the grass is tall, the grass is up for hay, With daisies white like silver and buttercups like gold, And it's oh! for once to play thro' the long, ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit

... that the present generation know nothing of their own birthplaces, or of the lanes, woods, and fields through which they roam. Not one young man in twenty knows where to find the wood-sorrel, or the bee-orchis; still fewer can tell the country legends, the stories of the old gable-ended farmhouses, or the place where the last skirmish was fought in the Civil War, or where the parish butts stood. Nor is this ignorance confined to the unlearned rustics; it is shared by many ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... as the bell in the sunset tolled, The meadow-sweet and the mary-gold And the purple orchis kissed their ankles And lured them over the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... it is, it seems likely enough that, with the increasing popularity of country walks, there will after a time be no daffodils or orchises left in England. If one were sure of it, one would never pluck a bee-orchis again. One does not know why one plucks it, except that the bee-shaped flower is one of the most exquisite of Nature's toys, and one is greedy of possessing it. Children try to catch butterflies for the same reason. If it were possible to catch a sunset or a blue sea, no doubt ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... insects (105/2. "Fertilisation of British Orchids by Insect Agency." This article in the "Gardeners' Chronicle" of June 9th, 1860, page 528, begins with a request that observations should be made on the manner of fertilisation in the bee-and in the fly-orchis.), as it involves a curious point, and as you cared about my paper on kidney beans; but as you are so ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... beautiful as it is accessible. You step out of your hotel into the midst of wild scenery, rough hills of broken granite screened with firs, or paths winding through a wilderness of white heath. Everywhere in spring the ground is carpeted with a profusion of wild-flowers, cistus and brown orchis, narcissus and the scarlet anemone; sometimes the forest scenery sweeps away, and leaves us among olive-grounds and orange-gardens arranged in formal, picturesque rows. And from every little height there are the same ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... wonderful forms of those tropical plants for ever, if it had not been for the crowds of people, and for a little awe of Lord Marchmont, who had given her his arm, and who did not seem to know or care much even for the dove orchis or the zebra-striped pitcher-plant. She wished she could turn him into Edmund, and looked at every plant which she fancied a native of the Cape, almost as kindly as if it had been a ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... violet, They perished long ago, And the brier rose and the orchis died Amid the summer's glow; But on the hill, the golden-rod, And the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, In autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, As falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... with a multitude of myths of the metamorphosis of human beings into trees, plants, and flowers. Among the most familiar stories are those of Adonis, Crocus, Phyllis, Narcissus, Leucothea, Hyacinthus, Syrinx, Clytie, Daphne, Orchis, Lotis, Philemon and Baucis, Atys, etc. All over the world we find myths of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... class is subdivided. The epidendrum, the iris, the orchis and the chrysanthemum became special studies each of which had its own masters, both from the standpoint of painting itself, and of the application of the aesthetic rules which govern this art. The bamboo and the ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci

... drew near Shadynook, the sunshine seemed growing every moment brighter, and the flowers exhaled sweeter odors. The orchis, eglantine, sad crocus burned in blue and shone along the braes, to use the fine old Scottish word; and over him the blossoms shook and showered, and made the whole air heavy with perfume. As he approached the gate, set in the low flowery fence, Jacques sighed and smiled. Daphnis ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... vantage, of some Umbrian picture. Every hedgerow is hoary with May-bloom and honeysuckle. The oaks hang out their golden-dusted tassels. Wayside shrines are decked with laburnum boughs and iris blossoms plucked from the copse-woods, and where spires of purple and pink orchis variegate the thin, fine grass. The land waves far and wide with young corn, emerald green beneath the olive-trees, which take upon their underfoliage tints reflected from this verdure or red tones from the naked ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds



Words linked to "Orchis" :   orchidaceous plant, Orchis mascula, spermatic cord, rein orchis, purple-fringed orchis, bollock, testicular artery, epididymis, male reproductive system, testicle, male reproductive gland, undescended testis, vas deferens, genus Orchis, fen orchis, male genital organ, gonad, male orchis, butterfly orchis, fringed orchis, green fringed orchis, internal spermatic artery, butterfly orchid, testicular vein, Orchis papilionaceae, male genitals, purple fringeless orchis, male genitalia, purple-hooded orchis, purple orchis, ballock, seminiferous tubule, nut



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