old man's beardn.

1731 P. Miller Gardeners Dict. I. at Clematitis This plant in the Autumn is generally cover'd with Seeds, which are collected into little Heads, each of which having, as it were, a rough Plume fasten'd to it, hath occasion'd the Country People to give it the name of Old Man's Beard.

1742 W. Ellis Mod. Husbandman June vi. 67 In this Month [sc. June], be sure to cut..what we in Hertfordshire call the Old-Man's Beard.

1821 J. Clare Village Minstrel I. 84 Dig old man's beard from woodland hedge, To twine a summer shade.

1914 E. E. Pescott Native Flowers Vic. 101 We are familiar with the Clematis or ‘old man's beard’, with white starry flowers.

1981 L. Lawrence Earth Witch xx. 155 Hedges whitened with old-man's beard.

1984 T. Nottle Cottage Garden Revived 72 Colonial gardeners in Australia and New Zealand also had some native species of clematis—Old Man's Beard, Traveller's Joy or Virgin's Bower they were called.

1756 P. Browne Civil & Nat. Hist. Jamaica ii. ii. 193 Old-man's-Beard... This slender parasitical plant is found upon the trees in many parts of Jamaica... It is frequently imported..from North America, for the use of the sadlers and coachmakers.

1763 R. Brookes New Syst. Nat. Hist. II. xxx. 287 These birds have hanging-nests, which they build with the inward hair of a sort of moss or herb called old man's beard.

1795 O. Goldsmith Hist. Earth & Animated Nature III. iii. iii. 135 They fly busily about, in quest of a kind of moss, called, by the English inhabitants of those countries [sc. Guinea and Brasil], old man's beard.

1811–12 W. J. Titford Sketches Hortus Botanicus Americanus 55 Mossy Tillandsia, or Old Man's Beard.

1884 Evangelical Mag. Feb. 60 We have the ‘Old Man's Beard’, or Spanish Moss of American Forests.

1797 J. E. Smith Nat. Hist. Rarer Lepidopterous Insects Georgia I. 67 The caterpillar feeds on the Fringe-tree, called old man's beard from its clusters of white blossoms.

1855 W. G. Simms Forayers 489 Don't forget the ‘wake robbin’, and the ‘old man's beard’, the leafy green look of the one, and the snow-white fringes of the other.

1905 C. S. Sargent Man. Trees N. Amer. 778 Chionanthus Virginica, L. Fringe-tree. Old Man's Beard.

2003 Tennessean (Nexis) 28 Sept. 1 h Chionanthus virginicus [sic] is the botanical name for what nursery owner Paul Moore calls ‘one of my favorites’. Old man's beard is one of its common names; it's also called fringe tree, and it's native to the area.

1804 J. Underwood Catal. Plants Botanic Garden Dublin Soc. 92 (table) Geropogon..glabrium. Old man's beard..smooth.

1836 J. C. Loudon Encycl. Plants (rev. ed.) 666 Geropogon, W. Old Man's Beard.

1882 H. Friend Gloss. Devonshire Plant Names 41 Old Man's Beard... Saxifraga sarmentosa, L. Also called Aaron's beard.

1884 W. Miller Dict. Eng. Names Plants 247/1 Saxifrage sarmentosa, ‘Aaron's-beard’ Saxifrage, Creeping Sailor, Creeping Saxifrage, Mother-of-Thousands, Old-Man's Beard, [etc.].

1844 J. B. Williams N.Z. Jrnl. (1956) 104 These splendid leafs become smaller and grow in tufts..giving it the appearance of being dead, or ‘covered with old Mauries beards’ rather than natural leafs.]

1888 E. H. D'Avigdor Antipodean Notes 152 From the branches hung bunches of that wonderful lichen, ‘old man's beard’.

1913 A. R. Dugmore Romance of Newfoundland Caribou 39 During the very heavy falls of snow all ground food is hidden, they must then turn to the tree-growing mosses, such as..the common Usnea, or Old Man's beard.

1952 Cape Argus 30 Aug. (Mag.), 2/4 That soft yellowy-green parasite that festoons itself so theatrically over the tops of the trees, giving the forests that appearance of hoary old age, is known as ‘old-man's-beard’.

1965 E. Richardson Living Island 10 Many standing trees are dead hosts to tattered Old Man's Beard and other lichens.

1974 Islander (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 3 Nov. 7/3 Across the path and up into the old man's beard hanging from the pines.

1989 B. Parkinson Travelling Naturalist around N.Z. 156 Branches festooned with hanging, delicate grey lichen called Old Man's Beard.

1994 Beautiful Brit. Columbia Summer 30/1 Old man's beard hangs in ghostly webs on the lower branches and polypodium ferns grow near the trunks in pockets of moss.