Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Phylloxera
/fɪˈlɒksərə/noun
A sap-sucking insect that kills grapevines by feeding on their roots.
The Greek roots
φύλλον
phýllon
leaf
ξηρός
xērós
dry
Literally: “leaf-drier”
The story of the word
The name records the drying of leaves, though it is the root damage that finishes a vine off. Arriving from North America in the 1860s, it destroyed the majority of France's vineyards within three decades. The cure was not a chemical but a graft: European vines spliced onto resistant American rootstock, which is how nearly every wine grape in the world now grows.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
chlorophyllphyllotaxisxerophytexerography
In a sentence
A few pre-phylloxera vines survive in sandy soil, ungrafted and over a century old.