immortelle

noun

1. Any of various papery flowers, often dried and used as decoration.

   “[…] a big rabbit-warren of a house full of […] fragments of the day's market, garlic, stale incense, clothes thrown on the floor, petticoats hung on strings for screens, old bottles, pewter crucifixes, dried immortelles, pariah puppies, plaster images of the Virgin, and hats without crowns.”

2. Any of various trees of the genus Erythrina.

   “The land between the road and the gully widened; the gully grew shallower. Beyond it Mr Biswas saw the tall immortelles and their red and yellow flowers. And then the untrodden road blazed with the flowers.”