elbow plant

English

Noun

elbow plant (plural elbow plants)

1. A shrub, Forestiera pubescens, native to Texas, with twigs that grow perpendicularly to the branches and flowers that resemble forsythia.
   • 1904, Mrs. I.S. Rhoades, “House Plants in the Home”, in Transactions of the Illinois State Horticultural Society, page 381:

     Disreputable-looking umbrella plants, bilious begonias, emaciated geraniums (suffering, as the doctors put it, from "non-nutrition"), accentuated by the hanging-basket of scraggly elbow plant, which will somehow manage to live when it would be a relief to the eye if it were dead. Why, I ask, are plants of this description permitted a precarious existence, an offense to the artistic sense, under the name of house plants?

2. A factory that manufactures elbows (curved pipes).
   • 1988, DE/domestic Engineering - Volume 252, page 104:

     This is but machine #1 of our overall plan for our new elbow plant.