[f. CULVER dove + KEY.]
1. A popular name of various plants, the flowers of which suggest a bunch of keys. a. In 17th-c. writers, and still in Somersetshire, etc., the wild Hyacinth or Blue-bell, Scilla nutans.
(Commentators on Dennys and Walton have wrongly guessed Columbine, Meadow Cranesbill, Orchis mascula.)
a. 1613. J. Dennys, Secr. Angl., I. in Arb., Garner, I. 157. Pale ganderglass and azure culverkeys.
1653. Walton, Angler, xi. 214. I could … see here a Boy gathering Lillies and Lady-smocks, and there a Girle cropping Culverkeys and Cowslips.
1873. Jrnl. Horticulture, 1 May, 350/2. The Culverkey is well known in Somersetshire, and applies to the Bluebell (Hyacinthus non-scriptus). In Oxfordshire and Essex the same flower is by some called Culvers.
b. The Cowslip. (In some parts said to be the Oxlip; but cowslip and oxlip are confounded dialectally.)
1736. Pegge, Kenticisms, Culverkeys,… cowslips.
1873. Jrnl. Horticulture, 1 May, 350/2. The term Culverkeys is in general use among all the poorer classes of this neighbourhood [Ashford], and is applied to the Cowslip (Primula veris)…. Culverkey wine is a much admired beverage.
1878–86. Britten & Holland (citing Field, 26 June, 1876). Cover-keys or Covey-keys, the Oxlip—not the true Primula clatior, but the plant known as P. variabilis. Kent.
1887. Kentish Gloss., Culver key, the cowslip.
c. In Clare, app. a pale-flowered species of Vetch, ? Vicia sepium or V. sylvatica.
1835. Clare, Rural Muse, 68. Here I in cutting nosegays would delight, The lambtoe tuft, the paler culverkey.
2. The seedpods of the ash, ash-keys. dial.
1790. Grose, Provinc. Gloss. (Britt. & Holl.).
1851. G. Johnston, Flora of Berw.
