Word: vastatrix
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...diseases that can afflict the coffee tree, the most devastating is caused by a yellow-orange fungus called Hemileia vastatrix. In the late 19th century, when it ravaged the coffee plantations of Ceylon and India, the fungus helped change Britain into a nation of tea drinkers. Now it has invaded the New World, spreading rapidly through a Texas-sized area of southeastern Brazil and threatening 2 billion plants that yield a third of the world's coffee...
...vastatrix's deadly advance has given growers throughout Latin America a bad case of coffee nerves. Once the microscopic spores of the fungus settle on a susceptible plant, they send thin, tubular filaments into the leaf. These cause structural damage and also release a toxin that disrupts the life-giving process of photosynthesis. As the sickly patches spread, other leaves catch the infection, and within a year or two the entire plant dies...
Inside the Court House cowered no blackamoor. Something else had roused the passions of the mob. A law about an insect: phylloxera vastatrix...
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