necrotic

You are aware it is hot — it smells hot, which isn’t something easy to explain — but then transcends its smell into something necrotic.

In the next field over, rows of young iceberg lettuce seedlings were ribbed with streaks of tawny brown—the mark of the impatiens necrotic spot virus, or INSV, which has been wreaking havoc on Salinas lettuce since the mid-aughts.