Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various plants of the genus Verbena, chiefly of the Americas, that have opposite leaves and flowers with five-lobed corollas and are used medicinally or cultivated for their showy spikes of variously colored flowers.
  • noun Any of several similar plants, such as the lemon verbena.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A genus of plants, type of the order Verbenaceæ and tribe Verbeneæ.
  • noun [lowercase] A plant of this genus

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A genus of herbaceous plants of which several species are extensively cultivated for the great beauty of their flowers; vervain.
  • noun a perfume prepared from the lemon verbena; also, a similar perfume properly called grass oil. See Grass oil, under Grass.
  • noun a shrubby verbenaceous plant (Lippia citriodora), with narrow leaves which exhale a pleasant, lemonlike fragrance when crushed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Verbena, a genus of herbaceous plants of which several species are extensively cultivated for the great beauty of their flowers; vervain.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of numerous tropical or subtropical American plants of the genus Verbena grown for their showy spikes of variously colored flowers

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin verbēna, sacred foliage; see wer- in Indo-European roots.]

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