57 
—NOTES ON SPECIES OF COLLETOTRICHUM 
AND PHOMA IN UGANDA. 
W. Satu. 
A.—COLLETOTRICHUM ON COFFEE AND CACAO. 
Colletotrichum coffeanum, Noack, and Phoma sp. on coffee.—- 
A species of Colletotrichum of economic importance was first 
recorded in Uganda about the year 1908 when Dawe sent to 
ew coffee* material showing leaf-blotching and gradual 
withering of the branches. Massee had proposed the name of 
Colletotrichum coffeae for a fungus found on the affected leaves 
and twigs, but his description was never published. C. coffeae 
is therefore a nomen nudum, and it is more than likely that 
Massee’s C. coffeae was Colletotrichum coffeanum, Noack, which 
was named and described in 1901 from material from Brazil.+ 
Colletotrichum coffeanum occurs so regularly on Uganda coffee 
in association with what has been termed “ dieback,” that we 
are justified in concluding that it was present in the country 
in 1908, even although the details of the 1908 disease are so 
meagre that there can be no certainty that its effects, particu- 
larly the withering of branches ascribed to it, were similar to 
present-day dieback. This fungus has a wide distribution. It 
has been reported from South India, Brazil, Costa Rica and 
Porto Rico, while Gloeosporium coffeanum, Del., which is pro- 
bably the same fungus, despite the lack of the setae usually 
found on acervuli of Colletotrichum, has been found in Réunion, 
Madagascar and Java. Another species of the same genus, 
C. incarnatum, Zimm., which may be, and probably is, identical 
with C. coffeanum, has been known for several years on coffee 
leaves in what was German East Africa.t C. imcarnatum has 
also been given as the cause of a dieback of Coffea robusta in 
Ceylon,§ but, so far as the writer is aware, no experiments have 
been undertaken to test the assertion. 
In 1913, a species of Colletotrichum, subsequently sas 
Cc. coffeanum, Noack, was found by the writer on coffee 
Tench) which were dying back, but its presence was ous of 
regular occurrence. In later years, however, leaf- blotching 
found to be associated more regularly with that affection and 
with dieback twigs. It was also found to attack the berries, 
and there seems no room to doubt that it was becoming increas. 
ingly plentifut in its occurrence on the various parts of the coffee 
tree. Quite naturally there was then a tendency to ascribe all 
coffee dieback to the work of Colletotrichum. But, as was pointed 
* Coffea arabica. 
+ Zeitschr. f. Pflanzenkr. ni 1901, p. 196. 
t Der Pflanzer, 1913, 
§ Tropical Agriculturist, ‘s. 156, Sept., 1915. 
|| Annual Report, Dept. Agric. Uganda, 1913-14, p- 60. 
