purple loosestrife

purple loosestrife (countable and uncountable, plural purple loosestrifes)

1. A semi-aquatic herbaceous plant, Lythrum salicaria, having long spikes of purple flowers, native to Eurasia, considered invasive in North America and New Zealand.
   • 1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, “The Wild Wood”, in The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 48:

     Purple loosestrife arrived early, shaking luxuriant tangled locks along the edge of the mirror whence its own face laughed back at it.

   • 1987, Gene Wolfe, chapter LI, in The Urth of the New Sun, 1st US edition, New York: Tor Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 310:

     From the crest we could see the crest of the next, and upon it three bowers side by side, decked as my own had been with twined lupine, purple loosestrife, and white meadow rue.

   • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 70, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part Two: America, page 686:

     They leave him upon the New Castle Road, standing among the late purple Loosestrife by the Ditch, glancing upward from time to time, waving his Arm,— then growing still, appearing to listen.

• (Lythrum salicaria): purple lythrum, spiked loosestrife; long purples (literary, disputed)

• purple loosestrife on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Lythrum salicaria on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Lythrum salicaria on Wikispecies.Wikispecies