STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 215 



eleven, though there is very little doubt about the identity of the species. 

 No remedy is known. Similar species are found upon the raspberry and 

 the strawberry leaves, but were not noticed by us last year. 



Rust upon wheat and oats was particularly common in July of last 

 year. This is the disease affecting the leaves and stems, not the head. 

 In England, and sometimes with us, it is called mildew. The first form 

 of spore is not far from spherical, and of a reddish-brown color, as may 

 easily be seen from the dust on one's clothes if the stalks are brushed 

 against them. The second spores are very dark colored, cut in two by 

 one cross partition, and stalked or "handled." This same parasite is 

 found upon the leaves, etc., of many grasses, including the common 

 " tickle grass " {^Panicum capillare), and on the leaves of corn or maize. 

 Its life-history needs fuller investigation. According to DeBary, a care- 

 ful German experimenter, in one stage it infests the common barberry, 

 and the idea prevails that plants of this latter shrub are thus bad neigh- 

 bors for wheat. At any rate, no one has proved conclusively how the 

 spores behave in making their start upon the wheat plant, but it seems 

 impossible that they, in this country, should be dependent upon the 

 barberry in one stage of their existence. May be some other plant 

 answers the purpose as well, and finding this, may lead to a i)reventive. 

 Certainly no washes applied to the seed can do any good against the 

 ravages of this scourage, for the spores are not in or on the seed, but exist 

 over the winter in the fields on stubble, old grass, corn-stalks, etc. There 

 is scarcely a doubt if all these were carefully burned, and similar care 

 taken as to manure from animals fed upon affected straw, etc., something 

 like protection would be attained. The scientific name is Piucinia gra- 

 minis. 



Two other fungi affect the wheat, though much less destructive, than 

 the foregoing. These are "bunt" {Tilletia caries, Tub), and "smut" 

 i^Ustilago carbo, Tul.) The former can only be detected when the grain 

 is matured, except by a practiced eye, and is confined, so far as the spores 

 are concerned, to the kernel. The vegetative threads, however, penetrate, 

 and ramify through and through the tissues of the plant. If an affected 

 kernel is pressed between the thumb and finger, the whole will be reduced to 

 a black, ill-smelling mass, made up almost wholly of spores, which, by their 

 germination, give rise again to the disease. The latter shows itself plainly 

 enough while the grain is standing, the heads or ears looking slim and 

 poor, covered at last by a sooty powder. This is properly called "smut," 

 from the black powder or mass of spores. These are excessively minute, 

 something like eight millions of them placed side by side to the square 

 inch. The black, sooty masses upon maize are spores of a closely allied 

 species. For these two wheat diseases,, and probably that of corn, pro- 

 vided affected stalks are not left in the fields, washing or other cleansing 

 of the seed is useful and may be thoroughly effective. The former is 

 especially by this means readily mastered. 



The leaves of sunflowers and Jerusalem artichokes were very badly 

 rusted, and many plants killed outright, by a similar fungus to that of the 



