white alkali

American  

noun

1. Agriculture. a whitish layer of mineral salts, especially sodium sulfate, sodium chloride, and magnesium sulfate, often occurring on top of soils where rainfall is low.

2. refined soda ash.

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white alkali British  

noun

1. refined sodium carbonate

2. any of several mineral salts, esp sodium sulphate, sodium chloride, and magnesium sulphate, that often appear on the surface of soils as a whitish layer in dry conditions

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

white alkali

Farther on, even the green patches disappeared and white alkali soil showed between the gnarled sage bushes.

From The Texan A Story of the Cattle Country by James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx

For days now, in the dry sage country, from the ford of the North Fork of the Platte, along the Sweetwater and down the Sandy, the white alkali dust had sifted in and over everything.

From The Covered Wagon by Emerson Hough

The sun had lifted over the rim of the desert, a red disc which turned the gleaming white alkali patches to rose.

From Dangerous Days by Mary Roberts Rinehart

The bank dipped to a white alkali pit where the light lay in dead pools, gray in the twilight, quivering with heat, layers of blue air above ashes of death.

From The Freebooters of the Wilderness by Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

He saw them shoulder neck and neck along the white alkali bottom, then break to a gallop, the old man hanging to the pommel; then all disappeared round the end of the bank.

From The Freebooters of the Wilderness by Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut