elbow plant

plural elbow plants

1. A shrub, Forestiera pubescens, native to Texas, with twigs that grow perpendicularly to the branches and flowers that resemble forsythia.

   1 more example

   Disreputable-looking umbrella plants, bilious begonias, emaciated geraniums (suffering, as the doctors put it, from "non-nutrition"), accentuated by the hanging-basket of scraggly elbow plant, which will somehow manage to live when it would be a relief to the eye if it were dead. Why, I ask, are plants of this description permitted a precarious existence, an offense to the artistic sense, under the name of house plants?

   1904, Mrs. I.S. Rhoades, “House Plants in the Home”, in Transactions of the Illinois State Horticultural Society, page 381

2. A factory that manufactures elbows (curved pipes).

   This is but machine #1 of our overall plan for our new elbow plant.

   1988, DE/domestic Engineering - Volume 252, page 104