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Pimpernel   Listen
noun
Pimpernel  n.  (Bot.) A plant of the genus Anagallis, of which one species (Anagallis arvensis) has small flowers, usually scarlet, but sometimes purple, blue, or white, which speedily close at the approach of bad weather.
Water pimpernel. (Bot.) See Brookweed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pimpernel" Quotes from Famous Books



... recognizable by its pure green leaves and stems, even when not flowering. I cultivated it, in large numbers [162] during five succeeding generations, but was never able to find even the slightest indication of a reversion to the red prototype. The scarlet pimpernel or Anagallis arvensis has a blue variety which is absolutely constant. Even in Britton and Brown's "Flora," which rarely enumerates varieties, it is mentioned as being probably a distinct species. Eight hundred blooming seedlings were obtained from isolated parents, all ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... talk on a little longer about other shrubs, herbs, and flowers, (particularly of flowers) such as the "pink-eyed Pimpernel" (the poor man's weather glass) and the fragrant Violet, ('the modest grace of the vernal year,') the scarlet crested Geranium with its crimpled leaves, and the yellow and purple Amaranth, powdered ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... sundew loves thee well, And the green sward comes creeping to thy brink, And golden saxifrage and pimpernel Lean down to thee their perfumed heads to drink; And heavy with the weight of bees doth bend White clover, and beneath ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... the exquisite effect of the tender blue hepatica fringing the centre rail of the grip-cars, all up and down Broadway, and apparently springing from the hollow beneath, where the cable ran with such a brooklike gurgle that any damp-living plant must find itself at home there. The water-pimpernel may now be seen, by any sympathetic eye, blowing delicately along the track, in the breeze of the passing cabs, and elastically lifting itself from the rush of the cars. The reader can easily verify it by the picture in Mrs. Creevey's book. He knows it by its other name of brook weed; and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... leaves of the horse chestnut are made up keep flat and fanlike so long as fine weather is likely to continue. With the coming of rain, however, they droop, as if to offer less resistance to the weather. The scarlet pimpernel, nicknamed the "poor man's weather glass," or wind cope, opens its flowers only to fine weather. As soon as rain is in the air it shuts up and remains closed until the shower or ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... dandelion, dead nettle, and white dog rose, and trailing rose, violets (the sweet and the scentless), figwort, veronica, ground ivy, willowherb (two sorts), herb Robert, honeysuckle, lady's smock, purple loosestrife, mallow, meadow-orchis, meadow-sweet, yarrow, moon daisy, St. John's wort, pimpernel, water plantain, poppy, rattles, scabious, self-heal, silverweed, sowthistle, stitchwort, teazles, tormentil, vetches, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... Caesars," the words gave, to any one who had a clear idea of a Caesar, and of his dress, a better, and even stricter, account of the flower than if I had only said, with Mr. Sowerby, "petals bright scarlet;" which might just as well have been said of a pimpernel, or scarlet geranium;—but of neither of these latter should I have said "robed in purple of Caesars." What I meant was, first, that the poppy leaf {88} looks dyed through and through, like glass, or Tyrian tissue; and not merely painted: secondly, that the splendour of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... the rain. Little prickly rose-bushes (R. Webbiana) were covered with pink blossoms just bursting into full glory; bushes of white may, yellow berberis, Daphne (Oleoides?), and many another flowering shrub grew in tangled profusion, while pimpernel (red and blue), a small androsace (rotundifolia), hawks-bit, stork's bill, wild geranium, a tiny mallow, eye-bright, forget-me-not, a little yellow oxalis, a speedwell, and many another, to me unknown, blossom starred ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... Dandelion (Leontodon) is said to open about seven and to close about five; Arenaria rubra to be open from nine to three; the White Water Lily (Nymphaea), from about seven to four; the common Mouse-ear Hawk-weed (Hieracium) from eight to three; the Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis) to waken at seven and close soon after two; Tragopogon pratensis to open at four in the morning, and close just before twelve, whence its English name, "John go to bed at noon." Farmers' boys in some parts are said to regulate their ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... too is my guide, and the ant also. But the little pimpernel, the poor man's weather-glass, and the convolvulus are truer than any barometer, and a glass of water ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... and hairdressers. The proudest names in France were hidden beneath trade signs in London and Hamburg. A good number owed their lives to that mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, that unknown Englishman who had snatched scores of victims from the clutches of Tinville the Prosecutor, and sent M. Chauvelin, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... not shake One long milk-bloom on the tree; The white lake-blossom fell into the lake, As the pimpernel dozed on the lea; But the rose was awake all night for your sake, Knowing your promise to me; The lilies and roses were all awake, They sigh'd ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... an hour after that we heard a voice cry down to us: "Cheer up, boys, all's well." There, overhead, was the Mad Major in his plane. Elusive as was the elusive Pimpernel, he flitted back of the lines to ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... 49. Pimpernel, Pimpinella; eaten by the French and Italians, is our common Burnet; of so chearing and exhilarating a quality, and so generally commended, as (giving it admittance into all Sallets) ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... inhabited by armies of rabbits, and haunted by peewits and gulls, the Burrows are brightened by masses of wild-flowers, from the great mullein—once known as hedge-taper, because of its pale torch of blossoms—to the tiny delicate rose-pink bells of the bog-pimpernel. 'To the left were rich, alluvial marshes, covered with red cattle sleeping in the sun, and laced with creeks and flowing dykes.... Beyond again [looking back to the south] two broad tide-rivers, spotted ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote



Words linked to "Pimpernel" :   salad burnet, Anagallis arvensis, herbaceous plant, red pimpernel, Anagallis, Poterium, yellow pimpernel, blue pimpernel, genus Anagallis, scarlet pimpernel, Anagallis tenella, bog pimpernel, herb, poor man's weatherglass



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