Just stumbled across a fascinating word in the dictionary (Oxford Concise - 1975) while I was looking for something else:
desquamate - come off in scales. Hence desquamation, desquamative, (and this made me giggle) desquamatory. Is that last like defamatory, only for fish? Or defaming someone by saying their scales are falling off? <silly grin>

I love dictionaries, so many interesting words...