bird's-foot

British  

noun

1. a European leguminous plant, Ornithopus perpusillus , with small red-veined white flowers and curved pods resembling a bird's claws

2. any of various other plants whose flowers, leaves, or pods resemble a bird's foot or claw

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Example Sentences

Heading back toward Broadway, we came upon a giant mural on the side of an apartment building featuring male and female hooded warblers perched on a bird’s-foot violet plant.

From Washington Post • Jul. 7, 2022

By varying the steepness of the table, they created miniature mountain streams disgorging into fan-shaped flood plains and bird's-foot deltas.

From Science Magazine • May 13, 2021

Among the first, my notes mention the following: Convolvulus cantabrica, or flax-leaved bindweed; Lotus symmetricus, or bird's-foot trefoil; Teucrium polium, or poly; and the flowery heads of the Phragmites communis, or common reed.

From Bramble-Bees and Others by Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander

Many curious names have resulted from the prefix pig, as in Sussex, where the bird's-foot trefoil is known as pig's-pettitoes; and in Devonshire the fruit of the dog-rose is pig's-noses.

From The Folk-lore of Plants by Dyer, T. F. Thiselton (Thomas Firminger Thiselton)

On a dry, gravelly, half-wooded hill-slope the bird's-foot violet grows in great abundance, and is sparse in neighboring districts.

From Wake-Robin by Burroughs, John