mazzard cherry
- noun
- Archaic
- Many orchardists use mazzard cherry as rootstock when grafting commercial cherry varieties.
Examples
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The old garden was bordered with a row of mazzard cherry trees.
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Experts recommend mazzard cherry roots for their resistance to certain soil conditions.
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The mazzard cherry is often used for grafting.
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Farmers prefer mazzard cherries as rootstock.
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Many orchardists use mazzard cherry as rootstock when grafting commercial cherry varieties.
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Experts recommend mazzard cherry roots for their resistance to certain soil conditions.
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Farmers prefer mazzard cherry as rootstock for cultivating new cherry trees.
Synonyms
A wild sweet cherry tree used as the root for grafting cultivated cherries
A wild sweet cherry tree used to grow other cherry trees
A small tree that grows in the wild and produces cherries
A small tree that grows naturally and the small tart fruit it makes
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is compositionally a type of cherry: 'mazzard' denotes a wild/seedling cherry used for grafting and 'cherry' names the fruit/tree, so the phrase simply identifies that variety. If a learner knows the constituent meanings, the overall sense is directly derivable and predictable.
Etymology
Mazzard cherry may come from an old word for a common or wild tree that people did not grow for its fruit. Farmers used these tough wild trees as a strong 'root' to graft better fruit branches onto, so today mazzard cherry means a wild form of cherry often used as rootstock.