damping off fungus
- noun
- Specialized
:
hongo de pudrición
- The greenhouse lost half its young tomato plants to a damping off fungus last spring.
Examples
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A damping off fungus can destroy seedlings before they develop true leaves.
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To prevent damping off fungus, growers ensure proper air circulation in the seed trays.
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The damping off fungus can destroy young plants quickly.
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Many gardeners fear damping off fungi in their seedlings.
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The gardener noticed that the seedlings were wilting due to damping off fungus in the moist soil.
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If the conditions are too wet, damping off fungus can quickly cause decay in young plants.
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To prevent damping off fungus, it's important to ensure proper air circulation around seedlings.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'damping off' is a specialised horticultural term for a seedling disease and its sense is not transparently built from 'damping' (decrease in strength) plus the ambiguous particle 'off', even though 'fungus' signals an organism. A B1 learner knowing the individual words would be unlikely to infer the specific meaning 'fungus that causes seedlings to rot', so the expression is not compositional for general learners.
Etymology
Damping off fungus comes from the picture of wet seedlings that suddenly fall over and die at the soil line. The word damping points to the plants being wet and the word off shows they have gone bad. So the name means a fungus that makes young plants rot or 'die'.
