starve-acre

alternative starveacre · alternative starve acre · alternative stave-acre · alternative stave acre

1. uncountableA type of crowfoot Ranunculus arvensis, known for growing on impoverished soil.

   It is quite common for farmers to use cereal grains for seed which contain weed seeds, e.g. starve-acre (ranunculus arvensis), docks, wild oats, rye-like brome (bromus secolinus), etc.

   1925, The Farmer and stockbreeder year book and country gentleman's almanack

   2 more examples

   Some sandy soils are much overrun with the wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum), provincially called " rump," while the clays are swarmed with starve-acre (Ranunculus arvensis), and the clivers or burrs (Galium aparine), which are very troublesome to separate from the grain when winnowed.

   1855, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, page 207

   It seems that a particularly tiresome form of rauunculus, well described by the nickname of “starve-acre," can be cxterminated with dressings of sulphate of ammonia, and that this method is equally efficacious in ridding land of the picturesque but unprofitable poppy. Where there is more starve-acre than grass, the farmer pays twice his nominal rent, and is otherwise wasting money by growing weeds on his pasture.

   1922, Industrial & Mining Standard, page 500

comparative more starve-acre · superlative most starve-acre · alternative starveacre · alternative starve acre · alternative stave-acre · alternative stave acre

1. Pertaining to or characteristic of unproductive, impoverished soil.

   There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash farm as a starve-acre place.

   1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'urbervilles

   2 more examples

   They'd grown up together, had seen a lot of life, and were mostly inseparable, through six decades of raven, starve-acre days.

   2004, James Everett Kibler, Walking Toward Home, →ISBN, page 35

   I suggest that he was instead thinking about his birthplace, where, for a while, those infants did live to inherit the earth, at least the mined-out, falling-down, starve-acre part of it that was the town of Hailey.

   2011, John Rember, Mfa in a Box