scraggly

The Vietnamese people smuggler emerged, briefly and hesitantly, from the shadows of a scraggly forest close to the northern French coastline.

It’s no Field of Dreams, this bumpy patch of sun-baked earth with faded chalk lines, no bleachers, not a blade of grass and a drooping line of wire separating the outfield from houses where scraggly canines lurk.

A week after the rescue, Berkowitz put out a call for foster parents to care for the newborn ducks; by the end of the day, only a few scraggly dozen were left of the tiny yellow fluffy beings.

Still, the mention of native, low-water landscaping, or xeriscaping, conjures images of dusty plots with a few cactuses and scraggly shrubs interspersed with rocks.

With a scraggly stem a few meters tall, a handful of slim branches and modest, hand-shaped leaves, it doesn't look like anything special.