Our Lady's bedstraw
- noun
:
hierba de Nuestra Señora
- In the summer meadow, clusters of Our Lady's bedstraw glowed bright yellow among the tall grasses.
Examples
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Botanists observed that Our Lady's bedstraw thrives in well-drained, chalky soils across the countryside.
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Her wildflower bouquet included several sprigs of Our Lady's bedstraw, adding a delicate fragrance to the room.
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I found some Our Lady's bedstraw in the garden.
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Many herbalists use Our Lady's bedstraw for its medicinal properties.
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In the summer meadow, clusters of Our Lady's bedstraw glowed bright yellow among the tall grasses.
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Her wildflower bouquet included several sprigs of Our Lady's bedstraw, adding a delicate fragrance to the room.
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Many herbalists use Our Lady's bedstraw for its medicinal properties.
Synonyms
A low plant with many small yellow flowers that grows in meadows
A common plant with small yellow flowers that lives many years
Surface Forms
Morphology
our + Lady's + bedstraw
The element 'bedstraw' is analysable as bed + straw, which can cue a B1 learner that the phrase refers to a plant or material related to beds, and 'Our Lady's'/"lady's" functions as a traditional epithet marking a particular folk/plant name. However, the specific botanical identity and the fact that it is a yellow-flowered perennial (Galium verum) are not predictable from the parts alone and rely on cultural/lexical knowledge, so the connection is only partial.
Etymology
Our Lady's bedstraw may get its name from how people used the plant long ago: the stems of bedstraw were dried and used to stuff beds because they smelled nice and kept insects away. One popular story says people used this plant to make a bed for the baby Jesus for 'Our Lady', so the name came to mean this small yellow wildflower today.
