great St John's wort
- noun
:
hipérico
- The bright yellow flowers of great St John's wort attract bees and butterflies to the garden.
Examples
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Last spring, she pruned her great St John's wort to encourage more flower growth.
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Gardeners often plant great St John's wort for its ornamental blooms and hardy nature.
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The garden was filled with great St John's wort this summer.
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Many people admire great St John's wort for its vibrant yellow flowers.
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Gardeners often plant great St John's wort for its ornamental blooms and hardy nature.
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The bright yellow flowers of great St John's wort attract bees and butterflies to the garden.
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Many people admire great St John's wort for its vibrant yellow flowers.
Synonyms
A bush with large star-shaped yellow flowers in narrow pyramid-shaped clusters
A large bush with yellow star-shaped flowers that blooms in summer
A low bush with long oval leaves and many bright yellow flowers
A bushy plant from Europe and Asia with bright yellow flowers used in herbal medicine
A plant with bright yellow flowers used as a natural medicine and in old stories to keep away evil
Surface Forms
Morphology
Knowing 'great' (large/notable), 'St John's' (a possessive name referring to Saint John) and 'wort' (a plant name element) would allow a B1 learner to infer this is a (notable) plant named after St John, so the basic category is recoverable from the parts. However, the precise botanical sense ('a perennial shrub with large, star-shaped yellow flowers') and species-specific features are lexicalized and not predictable from the constituents, and 'wort' is somewhat archaic/specialized, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
The name great St John's wort comes from the plant's big yellow, star-shaped flowers that open around 'St John's Day' in June. People called it St John's because it blooms then and wort was an old word for 'plant', so the name simply describes a large garden 'plant' with bright summer flowers.
