Cinzeiro
A former name for a disease of Madeiran vines, whose nature is unclear; the Elucidário rejects identifying it with powdery mildew and suggests one of several less harmful fungi.
This was formerly the name of a disease that frequently attacked Madeiran vines. Some have sought to identify this disease, whose characteristics are not well known today, with mangra (powdery mildew of the vine, oidium), but this opinion does not seem justified to us. If Oidium Tuckeri had existed on the island since remote times, it is not credible that our vineyards could have withstood it, since the effectiveness of sulphur against that parasite was only discovered after 1850. It is more natural to suppose that the cinzeiro was caused by Botrytis cinerea, Fumago vagans, Pestalozzia Menezesiana or one of the other fungi that still appear on the vine today, though without doing it great harm.