Blight
Blight refers to a specific symptom affecting plants in response to infection by a pathogenic organism. Description. Blight is a rapid and complete chlorosis, browning, then death of plant tissues such as leaves, branches, twigs, or floral organs. Accordingly, many diseases that primarily exhibit this symptom are called blights. Several notable examples are: On leaf tissue, symptoms of blight are the initial appearance of lesions which rapidly engulf surrounding tissue. However, leaf spots may, in advanced stages, expand to kill entire areas of leaf tissue and thus exhibit blight symptoms. Blights are often named after their causative agent. For  example, "Colletotrichum" blight is named after the fungus "Colletotrichum capsici", and "Phytophthora" blight is named after the water mold "Phytophthora parasitica". When blights have been particularly vast and consequential in their effects, they have become named historical events, such as the 19th Century Potato Blight, also known locally from its primary consequence as the "Great famine", the Irish potato famine, and Highland Potato Famine, and the near extinction of the Bermuda cedar during the 1940s and 1950s in the event described as "The Blight" or "The Cedar Blight".