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dove plant

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

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dove plant (plural dove plants)

  1. An American orchid (Peristeria elata) that produces numerous globose white fragrant flowers. The centre of the flower resembles a dove.
    Synonym: dove orchid
    • 2024, Charles Bland Radcliffe, Proteus, or Unity in Nature:
      The flower of the dove plant (Peristeria elata), the loveliest of all orchidacean flowers, consists of a rose-like crown of white sepals, from the bosom of which a white dove, with outstretched wings, is, as it were, upon the point of taking flight.
  2. Any plant of the genus Aquilegia, so called because the flower resembles a ring of five doves.
    • 2017, Henry N. Ellacombe, The Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare, page 57:
      Columbine, or the Dove-plant, calls our attention to the "resemblance of its nectaries to the heads of pigeons in a ring around a dish, a favourite device of ancient artists" (Dr. Prior); or to "the figure of a hovering dove with expanded wings, which we obtain by pulling off a single petal with its attached sepals" (Lady Wilkinson);
  3. A tropical or subtropical flowering shrub, Melochia tomentosa.
    • 2012, William J. Little, A Sonoran Desert Scrapbook:
      Dove Plant can flower year-round following even the smallest rain.

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