cow lily

plural cow lilies · alternative cow-lily

1. countableuncountableA water lily of species Nuphar advena, of temperate eastern North America.

   The Cow Lily is very common in still or stagnant water, often growing so profusely that passage in boats is almost impossible.

   1910, Chester Albert Reed, Wild Flowers East of the Rockies, page 117

   2 more examples

   Bess amused herself the other day by making a large bouquet entirely of yellow flowers of different shades and varieties, and it looked like a city milliner's window in this present season of "tilleul," "old gold," and "saffron:" vivid coreopsis, with dark velvet centres; "butter-and-eggs," with spires of palest straw color and orange mingled; barberry blossoms in drooping sprays, buttercups with gold enamelled blossoms, "yellow daises,"^([sic]) a few late dandelions, the little "five-finger," and some yellow pond-lilies (they call them "cow-lilies" here).

   1878, Annie Trumbull Slosson, “More Daisy Farm Letters”, in The China Hunters Club, page 201

   One seldom needs to stroll far along the shores of a pond or the sluggish inlet from a brook before finding the blossoms of the large yellow pond-lily, perhaps more often called the cow-lily.

   1913, Clarence Moores Weed, Seeing Nature First, page 105

   Synonyms: yellow pond-lily, spatterdock