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Verbena   Listen
noun
Verbena  n.  (Bot.) A genus of herbaceous plants of which several species are extensively cultivated for the great beauty of their flowers; vervain. Note: Verbena, or vervain, was used by the Greeks, the Romans, and the Druids, in their sacred rites.
Essence of verbena, Oil of verbena, a perfume prepared from the lemon verbena; also, a similar perfume properly called grass oil. See Grass oil, under Grass.
Lemon verbena, or Sweet verbena, a shrubby verbenaceous plant (Lippia citriodora), with narrow leaves which exhale a pleasant, lemonlike fragrance when crushed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Verbena" Quotes from Famous Books



... mother-god figures in the folk-lore of many lands. The vervain, or verbena, was known as the "Tears of Isis," as well as the "Tears of Juno,"—a name given also to an East Indian grass (Coix lacryma). The lily of the valley, in various parts of Europe, is called "The Virgin's Tears," "Tears of Our ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... smell as sweet under another name, but it may be questioned whether it would stand being called by the name of dimethyl-2-6-octadiene-2-6-ol-8. Geraniol by oxidation goes into the aldehyde, citral, which occurs in lemons, oranges and verbena flowers. Another compound of this group, linalool, is found in lavender, bergamot and ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... for as the child paused before pale sweet-scented Verbena, the flaunting Poppy caught her eye, and she extended her hand toward the ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... enjoyed by all. After this refreshment a move was made, the luggage had gone on, and the party followed in their two coaches. We now began to approach a more pleasing country, and drove through little montes of scrub and trees, with a few bright-coloured verbena and cacti growing near the ground, making a brave show, and that larger optunia, the prickly pear, with its silver grey appearance and the bright crimson of its fruit showed up occasionally against the low trees. Altogether, the land had a more homelike ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... by Boche was a pot of pansies, and his wife's was mignonette; Mme Lerat's, a lemon verbena. The three furnaces filled the room with an overpowering heat, and the frying potatoes drowned their voices. Gervaise was very sweet and smiling, thanking everyone for the flowers, at the same time making the dressing for the salad. The perfume ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... smaller birds are brilliantly coloured; and the bright green sward, browsed short by the cattle, is ornamented by dwarf flowers, among which a plant, looking like the daisy, claimed the place of an old friend. What would a florist say to whole tracts, so thickly covered by the Verbena melindres, as, even at a distance, to appear of the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... have suspected in the drier weather. In an incredibly short time the long gravelly or sandy slopes about the bases of the mountains are covered with a veritable carpet of green, yellow, and red. The sand verbena, the evening primrose, baby blue-eyes, and different kinds of lilies grow so thickly in places that every footstep ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... the instruction of the rest, he will free these entertainments from many of those considerable evils which usually attend them. Some that put borage into the wine, or sprinkle the floor with water in which verbena and maiden-hair have been steeped, as good raise mirth and jollity in the guests (in imitation of Homer's Helen, who with some medicament diluted the pure wine she had prepared), do not understand that that fable, coming from round ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... course, in different soils and under different treatment is more or less a variable quantity. The figures in parentheses suggest in inches suitable distances for planting in the row when immediate effects are expected. A verbena in rich soil will in time cover a circle three feet or more in diameter; other plants mentioned spread considerably; but when used in the carpet-bed, they must be planted close. One cannot wait for them to grow. The aim is ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... suppose what a southern climate this is, when I tell you that myrtles and verbena, three or four feet high, and hydrangeas are in flower in the gardens—even in ours, which is about a hundred and fifty yards from the sea. I have written to the end of my paper. Give our kindest regards to Mr. Martin, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... indignantly, "I'd do a smoother job; when I do lie, I notice yuh all believe it—till yuh find out different. And by gracious yuh might do as much when I'm telling the truth! Go up to the White House and see, darn yuh! If yuh don't find Miss Verbena Martin up there telling the Little Doctor how her heart goes out to her dear cowboys and how she's going to get in touch with 'em and help 'em lead nobler, better lives, you can kick me all round the yard. And ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... in window boxes outside in summer are those of drooping habit: lobelia, Kenilworth ivy, verbena, tropeolum, petunia, and sweet-alyssum toward the front, and behind, more erect plants, such as geranium, heliotrope, begonia, phlox, and nasturtium. The box must not be ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... leg. The place nevertheless was full of pears, peaches, figs, green corn, American squashes, beans, tomatoes, and no end of roses, gladioli, tobacco plant, hollyhocks, heliotrope, dahlias, morning-glories, verbena, and sunflowers. ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... wild olive, species of rock-rose, wild privet, acacias and mimosas, barberry and Zizyphus; and in the eastern ramifications of the chain, Chamaerops humilis (which is applied to a variety of useful purposes), Bignonia or trumpet flower, sissu, Salvadora persica, verbena, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... I will, in all probability, get just a little bit jingled at dinner. After dinner, we'll sit on the porch flanking the patio and smoke cigars, and I'll smell the lemon verbena and heliotrope and other old-fashioned flowers modern gardeners have forgotten how to grow. About midnight, Father Dominic's brain will have cleared, and he will be fit to be trusted with his accursed automobile; so he will snort home in the moonlight, and my father will then carefully ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... allowing them always the lead. "This is better and better," thought Miss Bracy as she poured tea; and, after a while, "But this is amazing!" He was a thorough child, too, with all his unconscious tact. The scent of a lemon-verbena plant fetched him suddenly to his feet with his eyes bright. "Please let me—" he thrust his face into the bush; "I have never ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the riotous eating of fritters in their honor. I am afraid that the progress of luxury and love of ease has wrought a change in the observance of these festivals. The feast of midsummer night is called the Verbena of St. John, which indicates that it was formerly a morning solemnity, as the vervain could not be hunted by the youths and maidens of Spain with any success or decorum at midnight. But of late ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... three unnecessary miles of walking every month of her twenty-six years' tenancy. Martie liked the garden best, and the old stables painted white. She loved the rich mingled scents of wallflower and alyssum and lemon verbena; and, as they walked about, she tucked a velvet plume of dark heliotrope into the belt of her thin white gown. "My first colour!" she said ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... are divided into two schools. Some assert that it is necessary to give the man who is sick in his liver things over which Peneter-Deva has influence, therefore copper, lapis lazuli, extract of flowers, above all verbena and valerian, finally, various parts of the body of the turtle-dove and the goat. Other leeches consider that when the liver is diseased it is necessary to cure it with just the opposite remedies, and the opponent of Peneter-Deva ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... his own, is quite willing to abandon his favourite yellow marigold and luscious jasmine for the pooteena and the beebeena and the fullax. But perhaps you do not know these flowers by their Indian names. We call them petunia, verbena, and phlox. This is, doubtless, another indication of our ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... important occasions a whole sheep, forms the principal dish, which is cleverly divided by the host or principal guest without the aid of knife or fork. Water in porous jars, often flavoured with rose-leaves or verbena, is presented by servants as the meal proceeds. The final dish always consists of boiled rice and milk sweetened with honey, a delicious dish, which is eaten with the same spoon by which the soup ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... loquat all in full bearing. The garden seemed a tangle of all manner of vegetation—an oleander in bloom, a poinsettia, a yucca, lifting its spike of waxen white blossoms, a narrow flower-border in which the gardenias had become tall shrubs and the scented verbena shrubs almost trees. As for the blend of perfume, it was dreamily intoxicating. Two bamboos, guarding the side entrance gate, made a soft whispering that heightened the dream-sense. The bottom of the garden looked an inchoate mass of greenery ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... rectory, standing well back from the road, embowered in trees, and with a carriage-drive running straight up through its beautiful rose-garden to the front door. Nearer the beach, and on the opposite side of the valley, was "Verbena Cottage," the abode of Lieutenant Bobus, in command of the coast-guard; and still nearer the beach, some ten or a dozen yards back from the road, enclosed within a neat paling, sheltered by lofty trees, with a lovely flower-garden in front and ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... with their formal rows of trees, their flower-packed gardens and trim hedges. Slowly they would pace along, enjoying the sweeter air of the suburbs, or, gardenless themselves, would stand to peep through garden-gates at the well-ordered array of geranium, calceolaria, verbena; sniffing the fragrance from the serried rows of stocks, the patches of mignonette, or the blossoming ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... worthies comes the verbena, good for bedding, good for cutting, and in some of the mammoth varieties subtly fragrant. Verbenas may be raised to advantage in a hotbed, but if the seed be soaked overnight in warm water, it will germinate ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... one house at the end of a small court—the last house on the easterly edge of the village, and standing quite alone—sends up no smoke. Yet the carefully trained ivy over the porch, and the lemon verbena in a tub at the foot of the steps, intimate that the place is not unoccupied. Moreover, the little schooner which acts as weathercock on one of the gables, and is now heading due west, has a new topsail. It is a story-and-a-half ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... was taken up by a plot of turf, smooth as a bowling green: but beyond this stretched a miniature orchard, and along the walls ran two deep borders crowded with midsummer flowers— tall white lilies and Canterbury bells; stocks, sweet williams, mignonette, candytuft and larkspurs; bushes of lemon verbena, myrtle, and the white everlasting pea. Near the house all was kept in nicest order, with trim ranks of standard roses marching level with the turfed verges, and tall carnations staked and bending towards them across the ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... sacred herbs)—Ver. 727. "Verbena" appears to have been a general term applied to any kind of herb used in honor of the Deities, or to the boughs and leaves of any tree gathered from a pure or sacred place. Fresh "verbenae" were placed upon the altars every day. See the Mercator of ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... that they would catch up the name young Philip had bestowed upon me. That they knew of it I had pretty good evidence, for one day when I was busy over one of the verbena beds—busy at a task Mr Solomon had set me after the sun had made the peach-house too hot, a big bluff gardener came and worked close by me, mowing the grass in a ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... but there are besides four imperfect males, or filaments without anthers upon them, called by Linneus eunuchs. The flax of our country has ten filaments, and but five of them are terminated with anthers; the Portugal flax has ten perfect males, or stamens; the Verbena of our country has four males; that of Sweden has but two; the genus Albuca, the Bignonia Catalpa, Gratiola, and hemlock-leaved Geranium have only half their filaments crowned with anthers. In like manner the florets, which form the rays of the flowers of the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... said Genevieve, wiping up her tears as well as she could; and she ran into the garden, and picked a large bunch of flowers. There were the sweet mignonette and heliotrope, the pink verbena, and the beautiful white scented verbena, the gay phlox, the pure candytuft, bits of lemon blossoms, and the faithful pansies. It was such a beautiful bunch as to melt poor Hepsa's heart ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins

... refers to vervain as a charm to recover lost love. Doubtless this was the verbena, the herba sacra employed in ancient Roman sacrifices, according to Pliny. In his day the bridal wreath was of verbena, gathered ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Garrard county woodlands. Now the wild flower's timid blooming Colors distant fields and by-ways, And the city's rare exotics, In the crystal greenhouse, flourish; Rose and lily and camelia, Tulip, fuschia, and verbena, Rear their gorgeous tints to gladden Many a sweet domestic picture. All the knotted thorns and briers, Serve in close-cut garden hedges; All the grapevine swings are curling Over tasteful, latticed arbors. ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... his box of flowers at the village infirmary. He knew that that day it was to have been full of verbena, sweet geranium, sweet briar, thyme, myrtle, lavender and ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... had risen. The white house stood clearly out in its radiance. The lattices were wide open and the parlor lighted. They walked slowly towards it, between hedges of white camelias and scarlet japonicas. Vanilla, patchuli, verbena, wild wandering honeysuckle—a hundred other scents—perfumed the light, warm air. As they came near the house there was a sound of music, soft and tinkling, with a rhythmic accent as pulsating as ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr



Words linked to "Verbena" :   sand verbena, desert sand verbena, vervain, sweet sand verbena, flower, pink sand verbena, verbena family, yellow sand verbena, genus Verbena



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