Xyris

• WordNet 3.6
  • n Xyris chiefly American marsh plants, having usually yellow flowers
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• • n Xyris (Bot) A genus of endogenous herbs with grassy leaves and small yellow flowers in short, scaly-bracted spikes; yellow-eyed grass. There are about seventeen species in the Atlantic United States.
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• • n xyris A genus of plants, type of the order Xyrideæ. It is characterized by flowers with a broad petaloid sepal which is very caducous, and a style without any appendage. About 40 species have been described, but not all are now thought distinct. They are tufted herbs, the stems usually flattish and two-edged, with linear rigid or grasslike leaves, and small globose or ovoid flower-heads with very closely imbricated rigid bracts. They are known as yellow-eyed grass, from the yellow petals; 17 species occur in the southern United States, mostly in sands and pine-barrens; 4 extend northward, of which X. flexuosa, with a twisted, and X. Caroliniana, with a flattish scape, occur from Massachusetts to Florida; X. fimbriata and X. torta occur in pine-barrens from New Jersey southward. The leaves and roots of X. Indica are used as a remedy against leprosy and the itch in India, as are also those of X. Americana in Guiana and of X. vaginata in Brazil.
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