celandine

plural celandines

1. countableuncountableAny plant of the genus Chelidonium.
2. countableuncountableEither of two not closely related flowering plants

   The poor but lovely bird sat there, posing among the celandines and wood anemones, wondering why its wing-tips were frozen together.

   2000, Bill Oddie, Gripping Yarns, page 26

   4 more examples

   So men haue learned many precious remedies for many diseases euen by brute [beasts], as we see by the swallow, who hath taught vs that the ioice of Celandine is singuler for the eies, for that she restoreth sight to her yong ones with Celandine.

   1595, Thomas Johnson, Cornucopiæ, London: William Barley

   If your mouth waters now, what had it done, / Cou’d you have seen our delicate fine thrushes / Hot from the spit, with myrtle-berries cramm’d, / And larded well with celandine and parsley, / Bob at your hungry lips, crying—Come eat me!

   1786, “From The Miners of Pherecrates”, in Richard Cumberland, transl., The Observer, volume 3, number 78, page 175

   Buttercups, that will be seen, Whether we will see or no; Others, too, of lofty mien; They have done as worldlings do, Taken praise that should be thine, Little, humble Celandine!

   1807, William Wordsworth, “To the Small Celandine”, in Poems, volume 1, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, page 25

   Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers—celandines.

   1950, C. S. Lewis, chapter 11, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Collins, published 1998

3. Either of two not closely related flowering plants:
   1. countableuncountableGreater celandine (Chelidonium majus).
   2. countableuncountableLesser celandine (Ficaria verna, formerly Ranunculus ficaria).

      Synonyms: pilewort