Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Botrytis
/bəˈtraɪtɪs/noun
A genus of grey mould fungi, notorious on grapes and soft fruit.
The Greek roots
βότρυς
bótrys
bunch of grapes
Literally: “like a cluster of grapes”
Follow a root:βότρυς1 word
The story of the word
Persoon named the genus in 1794 for the spore heads, which branch and bunch under a lens exactly like a miniature grape cluster. On wine grapes the same fungus is either ruin or fortune: grey rot in damp weather destroys a crop, while noble rot in dry autumn air shrivels the berries and concentrates the sugar. Sauternes, Tokaji and the German Trockenbeerenauslese all depend on it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
In a sentence
They wait for botrytis and pick over the same rows six or seven times, berry by berry.