Definition of "mott"

They were rolling southward on the International. The timber was huddling into little dense, green motts at rare distances before the inundation of the downright, vert prairies. This was the land of the ranches; the domain of the kings of the kine.

1903 February, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Hygeia at the Solito”, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume VIII, number 2, New York, N.Y.: John Wanamaker, page 173, column 2

We continued northwest, the grass tall with scattered thick motts of oak and the mesquites with their flickering leaves and the yuccas in bloom with their white flowers.

2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 39

The Hon. TOM DASHALL in the mean time was in close conversation with his mott in the corner of the Box, and was getting, as Sparkle observed, "rather nutty in that quarter of the globe."

c. 1821, Pierce Egan, Real Life in London‎, page 223

The truck was going past Wollaton Park and Barry was still yapping about this chick's hairy mott and yet it was only background muffle to Desmond.

1978, Pat McGrath, People in the Crowd, page 150