New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 805 



necessary to sow about half a bushel* more per acre than when 



untreated seed is used. This is on the basis of two and one-half 



bushels per acre. Two men in one day can treat enough seed to 



sow twenty acres.* 



NOTES ON SMUT. 



What Is It? 



The so-called smut is a parasitic plant, that is, a plant which 

 feeds upon some other plant as a host, and grows upon, or inside 

 of it. It comes from a spore, which is comparable to a seed in 

 the higher plants, grows and produces fruit, with which to per- 

 petuate itself much the same as any other plant. The black 

 masses of smut so noticeable when the grain is ripening consist 

 of countless numbers of minute ripened spores, the fruit of the 

 parasitic plant. These spores are often blown from the oat- 

 head as soon as they ripen, thus leaving a naked stalk, but more 

 often, perhaps, they remain in black disagreeable masses. 



How THE Smut Plant Grows. 



Since the smut spores are microscopic in size a large number 

 may be attached to the kernels without being noticed. In this 

 way they are unayoidably sown with the oats in the spring. 

 While the oats are germinating and growing the smut spores are 

 doing the same thing, only in a little different way. Each germ- 

 inating spore sends out a minute tube which penetrates the little 

 oat plant when it is perhaps from two to four days old. After 

 entering the oat plant the minute tube develops into branching 

 • threads, which grow up within the plant. There is no evidence 

 of their presence until the heads are forming, but at this time 

 the kernels of oats are filled with these branching threads which 

 rob them of their nourishment and ripen myrids of new spores. 

 Thus, what should have been a head of oats turns out to be a 

 worse than worthless mass of dusty spores. It sometimes hap- 

 pens that only a i)art of the head or i>anicle is thus affected and 

 the stalks from each stool may or may not all be attacked by the 

 parasite. 



•Holden, P. G., Mich. Exp. Station Bui. 87. 



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