charlock

American  

[chahr-luhk] / ˈtʃɑr lək /

noun

1. a wild mustard, Brassica kaber, having lobed, ovate leaves and clusters of small, yellow flowers, often troublesome as a weed in grainfields.

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charlock British  

/ ˈtʃɑːlɒk /

noun

1. Also called: wild mustard. a weedy Eurasian plant, Sinapis arvensis (or Brassica kaber ), with hairy stems and foliage and yellow flowers: family: Brassicaceae (crucifers)

2. Also called: wild radish, runch. a related plant, Raphanus raphanistrum, with yellow, mauve, or white flowers and podlike fruits

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Etymology

Origin of charlock

before 1000; Middle English cherlok, Old English cerlic < ?

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

charlock

The earth was soft and crumbling, with a scattering of the weeds that are found in cultivated fields—fumitory, charlock, pimpernel and mayweed, all growing in the green gloom under the bean leaves.

From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams

All summer the hard fight against the charlock, year after year the same.

From Anne Severn and the Fieldings by May Sinclair

He had purposely selected a way that took them across many of young Whitmarsh’s ill-stocked fields, fields in which sedge and charlock wrote an indictment of neglected drains and half-hearted tillage.

From Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah

The charlock seems late this year; it is generally up well before June—the first flowers by the roadside or rickyard, in a waste dry corner.

From The Toilers of the Field by Richard Jefferies

Beneath your feet lie many hundred thousand acres of green pastures, varied in colour during summer and autumn by golden wheatfields bright with yellow charlock and crimson poppies.

From A Cotswold Village by J. Arthur Gibbs

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