little clubmoss
- noun
:
musgo de club pequeño
- The little clubmoss is often mistaken for a young fir tree due to its shape.
Examples
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Hikers in Scandinavia sometimes spot little clubmoss carpeting the forest floor.
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We found a patch of little clubmoss growing near the edge of the forest.
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The little clubmoss thrived in the damp forest.
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Have you seen a little clubmoss before?
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Hikers in Scandinavia sometimes spot little clubmoss carpeting the forest floor.
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The little clubmoss is often mistaken for a young fir tree due to its shape.
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We found a patch of little clubmoss growing near the edge of the forest.
Synonyms
A small evergreen plant that looks like a tiny fir tree and grows in cold northern places
A small plant like a tiny fir tree that grows in cold northern forests
A small plant like a tiny fir tree that grows in damp northern European and North American forests
An evergreen plant that looks like moss and has small cones that contain spores
An evergreen plant that looks like moss and makes tiny spores in club-shaped cones
Surface Forms
Morphology
little + clubmoss
This is a straightforward adjectival noun phrase: 'little' (small) modifies 'clubmoss' (a type of plant), so the meaning 'a small clubmoss' is directly compositional. Even if 'clubmoss' is rare, the adjective+noun structure and the semantics are predictable to learners who know the constituent words.
Etymology
Little clubmoss is a simple picture name: little shows it is 'small', and clubmoss describes a plant 'like a moss' that also has tiny, club-shaped cones on its stems. So the name helps you picture a tiny, mossy, fir-like plant, which is why we use it for this small perennial.
