Category: M

A styling tool that adds lift and volume, and creates soft waves and curls.  

Stale or mouldy smell.  

A sweet, light-brown syrupy liquid which is the concentrated water extract of malt, and is used for its toasted flavour and nutrient content in foods and medicines.  

A term applied to regions of the tropics and subtropics that experience a long dry season followed by a wet season with frequent heavy rain and thunderstorms, derived ultimately from an Arabic word ‘mausim’, for the rainy season. Plants adapted to monsoonal climates sometimes grow poorly in different climates.  

Certain kinds of fungi that form fine webs on the surfaces of organic materials, or on the leaves of live plants. Mildews thrive in warm, humid conditions and mainly affect plants that are not adapted to such conditions. Downy mildews are virulent plant diseases, the most notorious being downy mildew of grape. Lay term for…

Plants of the one clone raised by growing tiny pieces of tissue dissected from a plant’s shoot tip (a meristem) in a sterile nutrient medium using laboratory techniques. Manipulation of growth with plant hormones is needed to make the tissue differentiate into stem, leaves and roots. Mericloning is mainly used for orchid hybrids and can…

Countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, or at least those parts of them that are climatically influenced by the Mediterranean—for example, the southeastern thirds respectively of France and Spain, most of Italy, all the southern Balkans and much of Turkey. Only a narrow fringe of the coast and mountains of North Africa is truly Mediterranean. The…

Small sap-sucking insects of the family Coccidae, to which scale insects also belong. Mealybugs are tiny but easily seen, flattened and slow-moving, with a whitish water-repellent coating like flour dusted over cobwebby hairs. They hide on the undersides of leaves, among sheathing leaf bases, and among plant roots, thriving best on plants grown indoors in…

Any virus which has an affinity for the mucoprotein receptors in red blood cells. One of these viruses causes influenza. Any of a group of medium-sized ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses, including those that cause mumps and influenza. One of a group of RNA-containing viruses that includes those causing influenza in animals and man. The related…