the.com/phylloxera
a louse the size of a punctuation mark that nearly ended french wine.
means a tiny sap-sucking aphid-relative that attacks grapevine roots and can kill the whole plant.
from from greek phyllon (leaf) and xeros (dry) — named for the withered leaves it leaves behind; the species devastatrix arrived in europe via american vine cuttings in the 1860s and lived up to its name.
vineyards destroyedwiped out most of europe's vines by 1900
the fixgrafting european vines onto resistant american rootstock
still herenearly all wine grapevines today are grafted hybrids
root causefeeds underground, invisible until the vine is dying