cat-faced
n.— «Cool winter weather or high soil moisture canlead to a shift toward femalness, where the stamens fuse to the carpels or ovary wall. The resulting fruits become severely ridged (carpelloid, or “cat-faced”) and hence are deformed and unmarketable.» —“Why Some Papaya Plants Fail to Fruit” by C.L. Chia, Richard M. Manshardt in College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources Fruit and Nuts (Manoa, Hawaii) Oct., 2001. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
After our conversation about the expression dingle day, a term used by workers at a research station in Antarctica to denote bright, sunny weather, a listener offers a possible explanation for this term. It may derive from the idea of the skies...