sometimes chicken-weed. Also 5 chekenwede, 5–6 chekynwede, 6 chykenwede; 6 check-, chykwede, chikewed, -weede. [f. CHICKEN sb. + WEED, as eaten by chickens. The full form chicken-weed, which is the earlier, is still used in Scotland.]
1. A name now usually applied to a small weedy plant, Stellaria media (N. O. Caryophyllaceæ), but formerly to many other plants more or less allied, as Stellaria aquatica, and species of Arenaria; and even to others having only a similar habit of growth, as the annual weedy species of Veronica.
α. c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 74. Ch[ek]yn wede, herbe, hospia.
1538. Turner, Libellus, Chykenwede, A[l]sine.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., II. iv. Like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed.
β. 1503. Sheph. Kalender (1656), xxviii. Take chick weed, clythers, ale, and oat meal, and make pottage there with.
1538. Turner, Libellus, Chykwede, a[l]sine, anagallis.
1570. Levins, Manip., 52. Chickweede, anagallis.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, 50. Chickeweede hath sundry upright, rounde, and knobby stalkes.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, II. cxcii. 615. The Chickweeds are green in Winter.
1664. Evelyn, Kal. Hort. (1729), 208. Give them [Birds] … Beets, Groundsel, Chickweed.
1853. G. Johnston, Nat. Hist. E. Bord., 43. Turnips among which chickweed grew luxuriously.
1873. Geikie, Gt. Ice Age, v. 60. The purple lichnis and white-starred chick-weed.
2. With various defining adjuncts: as Bastard C. (Sibthorpia europæa); † Germander C. (Veronica agrestis); † Ivy C. (V. hederifolia); Sea C. (Honkenya peploides); Water C. (Montia fontana, also sometimes Stellaria aquatica, and Callitriche verna). See also MOUSE-EAR C., etc.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, II. cxciii. 615. Germander Chickweed hath small tender branches. Ibid., I. clxxxi. 487. The great Chickweede riseth vp with stalkes a cubite high, and some time higher.
1776. Withering, Bot. Arrangem. (1796), II. 175. Montia fontana, Small Water Chickweed, or Blinks.
3. Chicken-weed: ‘a name under which Roccella tinctoria has been sometimes imported’ (Treas. Bot., 1866).
