72 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Horticultural Society, and then through that get the experience of 
men who have been raising fruit for years. Membership in the 
society is the medicine, but unless the medicine be taken into 
the system and assimilated it can do no good; so the monthly mag- 
azine and reports will be of no use to you on your book shelves. 
Get the information where you will be able to put it into practice. 
If every man who plants trees next spring wculd do this, I venture 
to say thatinlessthantwo years the animal known as a “tree shark,” 
who goeth about seeking whom he may devour, would become a 
thing of the past; but just so long as people are looking for the 
impossible and wonderful, just so long will there be men whose 
brains can invent those monstrosities to please the fancy of those 
people who could not be persuaded to buy a good thing. It has 
been said by some one, and in the nursery business demonstrated 
as true, that “you can fool all the people some of the time and some 
ofthe people all of the time,” but let us hope that it will not be that 
all the people can be fooled all the time, which is nearly the case 
today. 
PLUM PUFFBALLS. 
PROF. L. H. PAMMEL, AMES, IOWA. 
The puffed appearance of the plums is due to a parasitic fungus 
which is not mature in the specimens sent me. It is commonly 
called plum pocket, or bladder plum (exoascus communis). The 
fungus appears soon after the petals fall, the plums enlarging rap- 
idly until they are many times larger than natural size; they are 
hollow and with occasional shreds. When mature they are some- 
what mealy because of the spores. The fungus causes anincreased 
activity in the tissues of the host, hence the enlarged plums, The 
mycelium (vegetative part of the fungus) is perennial and hence 
when a tree is once affected the disease annually occurs. I have 
had several queries concerning this disease in Iowa this season. 
Col. Brackett, of Denmark, writes that of many varieties of plums on 
his grounds, the Cheney is the only one affected. Here on the col- 
lege grounds the same variety has been seriously affected for several 
years. What should be done? An early application of bordeaux 
mixture or ammoniacal carbonate of copper to the twigs will kill 
many of the adhering spores,and when the disease has appeared itis 
advisable to cut back the branches and burn them. When a treeis 
badly affected, the whole thing had better be removea. There are 
many other kinds of this class of fungi; one kind produces disturbed 
and swollen branches on Chickasaw and WildGoose plums. Another 
kind is the so-called peach-leafcurl. Athird kind affects the poplar. 
Climate seems to have much to do with the severity of the disease. 
Dr. Erwin F. Smith has observed that a sudden fall of temperature 
has a marked effect in producing epidemics of this disease. The 
writer noticed the same thing a few years ago on the peach-leaf 
curl fungus here at Ames. In case of peach-leaf curl, when trees 
are badly affected they recover but slowly. Every one should care- 
fully note the varieties of plums and peaches affected, and select for 
planting only such as are least subject to the disease. We have in 
previous numbers ofthis journal commented on selections of plants 
to prevent diseases. This is not given the attention it deserves,— 
O. J. Farmer. 
