ground cedar
- noun
:
cedro rastrero
- The forest floor was covered in ground cedar, giving it a lush, green carpet.
Examples
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Hiking through the woods, she stopped to admire a patch of ground cedar by the trail.
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Gardeners sometimes use ground cedar as a decorative plant for shady areas.
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The ground cedar thrives in shaded areas.
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Many ground cedars can be found in the forest.
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Hiking through the woods, she stopped to admire a patch of ground cedar by the trail.
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The forest floor was covered in ground cedar, giving it a lush, green carpet.
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Gardeners sometimes use ground cedar as a decorative plant for shady areas.
Synonyms
4
3.7
Plants that grow low and spread over soil to protect it in gardens
1
4.7
A low plant that spreads to cover the ground and stop soil from washing away
A low juniper that spreads across the ground to make a thick cover
A low spreading shrub with evergreen leaves often used as ground cover
A low green plant like moss with creeping stems found in northern forests
A low green plant with many branching stems that look like small antlers
A low plant that looks like a small evergreen tree but is not a tree
A low plant with long creeping stems and upright branches that looks like a small pine tree
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun combines 'ground' (low to the earth/ground-level) with 'cedar' (a cedar-like plant), so the sense 'a low-growing plant resembling a cedar' is directly inferable from the constituents. This follows regular English compounding patterns (modifier + head) and is cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows both words can reasonably deduce the meaning.
Etymology
Ground cedar is a name that paints a small picture: people saw tiny plants that looked or smelled like a cedar but grew flat on the ground, like a low green carpet. So the name came to mean a 'low-growing plant' that resembles a cedar.