NOTES ON THE GENUS BALANSIA. 



By Miss A. M. King, B.A. 



(Read July lo, 1918.) 



(Plat/:? 25 and four text figures.) 



About the month of September of last year I was much 

 struck by the pecuhar appearance of much of the common grass 

 — Cynodon dactylon, which grows in great abundance about 

 Pretoria. Here and there, in patches of perfectly normal grass, 

 clumps of pale yellowish green grass were to be seen standing up 

 very erect. As time went on these abnormal shoots continued to 

 grow rapidly, and some of them even reached a length of 3 feet. 

 1 also noticed that they had far more nodes and far shorter inter- 

 nodes than the normal shoots, and that their leaves were com- 



FlG. I. 



paratively poorly developed. Also, no signs of inflorescences 

 were to be found except in very rare cases where much deformed, 

 shrivelled up structures were observed at the tips of shoots. 



Thinking that this abnormality might possibly be caused by a 

 fungus, I decided to investigate the matter, and collected material 

 for the purpose. Bits of root, stem, underground stem, and leaves 

 were sectioned and stained, but no trace of a mycelium could 

 be found. For several weeks I continued to section fresh material, 

 but still no mycelium was detected, and I began to think that 

 perhaps after all the trouble was a. physiological one. However, 

 about the beginning of December peculiar little black bodies 

 began to make their appearance in the axils of some of the leaves. 

 These little bodies averaged about i cm. in length, and were very 

 pointed and horny. On being sectioned, they were found to 

 v'onsist of a mass of hyphal tissue, in which were embedded leaves 



