willowherb

plural willowherbs · alternative willow herb

1. Any of several flowering plants, mostly in the genus Epilobium of the family Onagraceae.

   Never had they noticed the roses so vivid, the willow-herb so riotous, the meadow-sweet so odorous and pervading.

   1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, “The Piper at the Gates”, in The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 153

   2 more examples

   And willows, willow-herb, and grass, / And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, / No whit less still and lonely fair / Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

   1917, Edward Thomas, “Adlestrop”, in Poems, London: Selwyn & Blount, page 40

   Their flowers range from the rather formal blossoming of outer London to the wilder flowering of the country, where willow-herb and broom, traveller's joy and campion, go rioting over the chalky banks of the Metropolitan Line.

   1950 July, “Traveller's Joy”, in Railway Magazine, page ii (advertisement)