ball nettle
- noun
- US
:
ortiga de bola
- The yellow fruit of the ball nettle resembles small berries, but they are not edible.
Examples
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The ball nettle thrives in sandy soils throughout the southeastern states.
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Gardeners often remove ball nettle because its prickly stems can be painful to touch.
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The ball nettle is often found in disturbed areas.
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Many gardeners dislike the ball nettle for its prickly nature.
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Gardeners often remove ball nettle because its prickly stems can be painful to touch.
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The ball nettle thrives in sandy soils throughout the southeastern states.
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The yellow fruit of the ball nettle resembles small berries, but they are not edible.
Synonyms
A rough prickly weed with pale yellow flowers and small yellow berries that can be poisonous
A prickly weed that lives many years with pale yellow flowers and yellow berries, often in fields and gardens
A prickly plant with pale yellow flowers and poisonous yellow berries that can irritate the skin
A rough prickly plant from North America with pale yellow flowers and small berries
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun-noun compound is compositionally transparent: 'ball' (spherical mass) modifies 'nettle' (a prickly plant), so a learner would infer it refers to a nettle with ball-like/berry-like parts. This matches common English noun compounding where the first noun specifies a salient property (shape or fruit), so the overall meaning is derivable from the constituents by a B1 learner.
Etymology
Ball nettle gets its name from the plant's look: it is a prickly nettle that has small round balls of yellow 'fruit' that look like berries. That's why ball nettle means a prickly 'weed' with round yellow 'fruit'.
