Pl. -luses, rarely -li. [a. L. convolvulus the bindweed (also a caterpillar that rolls itself up in a leaf), Pliny, f. convolvĕre (see CONVOLVE), with dim. suffix.]
1. A genus of plants, containing many species, found in temperate and sub-tropical climates, having slender twining stems and trumpet-shaped flowers. The English wild species are known as BINDWEEDS. Convolvulus minor and major are florist’s names of well-known garden annuals.
1551. Turner, Herbal, I. L vj b. Mesue describeth diverse kindes of Convolvulus.
1597. Gerarde, Herbal (1636), 865. Convolvulus or Bindweed.
1640. Parkinson, Theat. Bot., 170. This and other Convolvuli [being] herbaceous and annual.
1664. Evelyn, Kal. Hort. (1729), 197. Set Leucoium … Lupines, Convolvolus’s.
1740. Mrs. Delany, Autobiog. & Corr. (1861), II. 73. Her clothes were embroidered upon white satin, with vine-leaves and convolvulus’s and rose-buds.
1848. C. Brontë, Jane Eyre, iii. Bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds.
1864. Tennyson, En. Ard., 577. The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil’d around the stately stems.
1872. Oliver, Elem. Bot., II. 211. The blue Convolvulus minor of gardens (correctly C. tricolor) is a native of the South of Europe. The Major Convolvulus (Pharbitis purpurea), common in the Tropics, is probably an American species.
b. attrib., as convolvulus moth, a species of Hawkmoth (Sphinx convolvuli).
1854. Medlock, trans. Schoedler’s Bk. Nat. (ed. 2), 566. The convolvulus moth (Sphinx convolvuli), the death’s head moth, [etc.].
1869. E. Newman, Brit. Moths, 6. The Convolvulus Hawk Moth … The caterpillar … is said to feed on the bindweed.
† 2. A caterpillar that rolls itself up in a leaf.
1634. Holland, Pliny, I. 547. To preuent … that worme convolvulus bred not in a vine, hee appointed [etc.].
