5 
Notes Upon Monilia fructigena, Pers. and Spore Germination.” 
By Byron D. HALsTep. 
During the middle of last May the writer brought a quantity 
of Cherry Rot fungus (Monilia fructigena, Pers.) from Mississippi, 
where he gathered it upon the excrescences of a wild plum 
caused by Zaphrina pruni. At that time the cultivated cherries 
in New Jersey were about the size of peas, and limbs bearing 
the fruit were placed in tall glass dishes containing water and 
covered with high bell jars. The fruit of one jar was inoculated 
with the Mississippi M/onz/ia, and after forty-eight hours there 
was a fine supply of the fungus covering the fruit, while the cor- 
responding jar, with fruit untreated, ripened in due time, the 
cherries free from the decay. 
It is with this out-of-season laboratory supply of Moncléa that 
the following experiments were made. It was soon determined 
that the Monzlia spores were particularly well adapted for the 
study of germination. In distilled water, at ordinary tempera- 
tures, they quickly send out the single germ-tube, and nearly al- 
ways at one side of the oval hyaline spore. It requires from one. 
to two hours for the production of a tube of a length exceeding 
that of the spore. In some cases, after five hours the tube was 
five to ten times the diameter of the spore. Inoculations were 
easily made upon green and ripe tomatoes, and various other 
vegetable substances, all demonstrating that this species of fungus 
is not confined to the stone fruits, where, however, it does 
its greatest damage; but will grow upon a wide range of 
Organic compounds. Comparative tests were, however, made in 
pure cherry juice and that of tomato, for example, and it was 
shown that the rate of development was about three times as fast 
upon cherry as tomato juice. Comparative tests were also made 
between spores in pure water and those in cherry juice. | While 
they grew well in the distilled water, the rate was greatly aug- 
mented by the cherry juice, and in forty hours there was a fine 
crop of spores, borne upon stalks, rising above the cherry juice, 
while no spores had been produced in the glass-slip well contain- 
ing only the water. 
* Read before Botanical Section of Association of American Agricultural 
College and Experiment Stations at Washington meeting, Aug. 15, 1891. 
