140 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



A FLORIDA SMUT, USTILAGO SIEGLINGIAE, 

 IN ILLINOIS 



MARGARET MEHLHOP, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



While in Havana, Illinois, the latter part of last November, 

 I collected a few grasses at a place locally known as Devil's 

 Hole. It is a small area on which the sand dunes are so active 

 that it cannot be used for cultivation. There grow here the 

 xerophytic plants and bunch grass associations which are char- 

 acteristic of typical blowouts. A point of peculiar interest re- 

 garding this region is that the animal life as well as the plant 

 life is similar to that of the southwestern States 1 . 



In our study my classmate and I became interested in a 

 grass which at first glance we thought was a dwarfed form 

 belonging to the genus Sporobolus, but a careful examination 

 of the spikelets gave indications that it was Triplasis purpurea 

 (Walt.) Chapin. However comparison with herbarium speci- 

 mens from the same county showed that although the less 

 evident but more important characteristics were similar, the 

 superficial but more apparent ones were not. Our conclusion 

 was confirmed by the examination of a smut growing in the 

 ovaries, the identity of which was determined by Dr. Wm. 

 Trelease. It proved to be Ustilago sieglingiae 2 Ricker, which 

 uses Triplasis purpurea as a host, but has been collected only 

 from Punta Rassa, Florida 8 . Examination of such periodicals 

 as "The Journal of Mycology," "Just's Botanischer Jahres- 

 bericht," and "Phytopathology," gave no evidence that it had 

 been reported in any other region. 



A careful comparison was made between the spores of the 

 material found in Havana and those of the type material, a 

 small amount of which Dr. J. J. Davis obtained from the her- 

 barium of the department of plant pathology of the University 

 of Wisconsin, and kindly sent to Dr. Wm. Trelease. They 

 were similar in all respects, except size, the type spores seeming 



