Sere

Dry, cracked, brittle. 

Found this in Chap­ter 76 of the Tao Te Ching, Stephen Addiss & Stan­ley Lom­bar­do translation:

The ten thou­sand plants and trees Are born soft and ten­der And die with­ered and sere.

Con­text tells a lot, but I don’t recall ever encoun­ter­ing this word before. So I looked it up and lucky you get to read about it.