31G 



THE (JARVEJ^EIC'S MuSTULy 



[October, 



There are several species of this i»enus of 

 funjji, all of which ai'c panusitic on liviiiu; plants. 

 Ascouiyces Ju^landis lives on "Walnuts, A. hnl- 

 latus attacts Pear loaves. The latter was de- 

 scribed and lii^ured in Vol. IX, Jvunnd Horti- 

 Lultuval Society, of London. 



Peach curl seems to have been lirst alluded to j 

 by Berkeley in his Jntroduction to Cryptogamic 

 Botany, and named and liiriu'cd by him in his j 

 Outlines of British Fumjoloyy. It is also de- 

 scribed and fiirured by W. G. Smith in the Gar- 

 iiener^s CA?o7nWe of July, 1875; the dijuro must, 

 however, be considered rather as dia.t,a-amatic 

 :is regards our American form. Sraee, in My 

 Garden, copies Berkeley's ligures, but says he has 1 

 not been able to see the fungus, and believes ! 

 '' the aphis is constantly present, and the fun- ! 

 gus is but rarely so. However it may be in j 

 England, in this country the reverse is true, ' 

 although it is often necessary to use chemical | 

 re-agents to detect the creeping mycelium in ! 

 sections of the leaf before the fruiting branches 

 appear. 



Except when trees are old or feeble, we have ; 

 rarely seen sufficient injury l)y Peach curl to 

 render serious efforts for its destruction advisa- 

 ble. Undoubtedly, if a remedy were indispen- 

 sable, it might be found in some of the prepa- 

 rations of sulphur applied by such methods as 

 are used in extirpating mildew from foreign 

 Grape vines. 



ADVENTITIOUS BUDS IN THE BEECH TREE. { 



BY B. F. L., PHILADELPniA. 



Last Spring, Avhilst wandering through a forest , j 

 I came across a Beech tree a foot or eighteen 

 inches in diameter, which was ornamented as 

 usual with the alphabet in disorder. The let- 

 ters in this case had been cut unusually deep, 

 both the outer and inner bark having been cut 

 away to the wood beneath. Again, the letters 

 were very large, so that strips of the bark an 

 inch or two in width had been removed. When 

 I saw the tree, a year or two had probably 

 elapsed since the artist had completed his work, 

 nature during the intermediate season having 

 tried its hand at improving the angular work of 

 the knife. The outer bark, last Spring, was 

 precisely as when first cut, whilst the inner bark 

 had rounded out into a moulding, to use a term 

 familiar to the builder, all over the surface of 

 which buds had thickly started, in some places 

 looking like a mass of thorns, in others the 

 growth had been continued into short branches 



which had finally died. Tiiih i^ :i ni nrd of prob- 

 aV)ly a not unusual circumstance, but I give it, eu^ 

 it bears some relation to the following, wliich I 

 have Just noticed duriiiL'^ the j)ast week ai. 

 Atlantic City. N. J.: 



The prevailing trees at this resort arc Willowh 

 and Poplai's, both members of the order Sali- 

 cacea?, wliich trees have been adopted for street 

 planting, after rejieated trials of other kinds, an 

 those best suited to the soil, &c. There; appears 

 also to be a native Willow, in addition to the one 

 introduced, which in habit is shrubby, and doe^ 

 not grow to any considerable height. This Wil- 

 low is at this season punctured by an insect, the 

 incision doubtless reaching the inner bark, and 

 egss therein deposited, the result of which is the 

 growth of a dense mass of leaves or diminutive 

 bi'anches from the wound. These leaves are 

 all twisted and curled up, and the petioles of the 

 leaves or the stems, whichever it may be, grow 

 more or less together, so that they form a mass 

 of green wood in which the caterpillar, when it, 

 emerges from the 'egg, forms its very irregular 

 nest. Am I not right, Mr. Editor, in supposing 

 the cause and result similar in the two cases 'i* 



[Not quite. The subject of form na produced 

 by the gall of an insect, and the result of the 

 insect's action in monstrous development, is 

 scarcely to l^e compared to the production of 

 buds and branches on parts of the steni where 

 none previoush- existed. 



Critically, it wa.s not the ■'• inner bark ". which 

 our correspondent saw rounded out. New wood 

 had been made by germination from last year's 

 cells, and these new cells forming a new coat of 

 wood, had made its own coat of bark. In such 

 cases the new wood cells while making the new 

 bark will often make at the same time buds 

 capable of developing into branches, a fact 

 well-known to horticulturists engaged in propa- 

 gating from root cuttings, as also to foresters, 

 who often see in the Cottonwood and Horse 

 Chestnut especially, a " forest of shoots" spring 

 from between the old wood and bark of a recently 

 felled tree stump. — Ed. G. M.] 



ASCLEPIAS CORNUTI. 



BV .MISS M. 



I have been watching with interest for some 

 days the visits of flies to the Asclepias Cornuti, 

 Decaisne, common Milkweed or Silkweed, the 

 house tly, a large greeii one, and another having 

 the appearance of a flying ant. They light on the 

 centre of the flowers, putting their probosces in 



