Annual Report of the State Botanist. 9 



vent the infection of the foliage, for in an early attack, like that 

 of the past season, the foliage might be destroyed before the 

 tubers were mature. In such a case the crop would be inferior in 

 quantity and quality even if the tubers should remain unaffected. 

 Thorough spraying with the Bordeaux mixture promises to do 

 this if commenced before the fungus makes its appearance and 

 repeated as often as it is washed off by rains. 



Thinking that the great windfall in the Adirondack wilder- 

 ness, where, about 45 years ago, a tornado swept through the 

 forest and prostrated the trees, would be a good locality in 

 which to study the action of wood-destroying fungi and obtain 

 specimens of them, that place was visited. But two agencies 

 had intervened to prevent the realization of my expectations. 

 Forest fires had run through the windfall and consumed all the 

 smaller material and so much time had elapsed since the death 

 of the trees that what the fire had left had passed beyond its 

 period of usefulness as a habitat for wood-loving fungi. Young 

 trees, chiefly poplar, have grown all along in the track of the 

 wind-storm. This wood is now so useful in furnishing material 

 for pulp that the strip of land devastated by the storm is by no 

 means destitute of value. 



It was at this time that a peculiar appearance of the oat-fields 

 in St. Lawrence county attracted my attention. The foliage of 

 the plants presented a singular admixture of green, dead-brown 

 and reddish hues, strongly suggestive of that of a " rust-struck " 

 field. But upon examination no rust fungus could be found. 

 Many of the leaves were either wholly or in their upper-half dead 

 and discolored. On these dead parts were a few scattered tufts 

 of a very minute fungus somewhat resembling the common 

 Cladosporium herharum. No other fungus was found upon them 

 and no description has been found corresponding to the char- 

 acters of this one. It ha^, therefore, been figured and described 

 in this report as a new species of Fusicladium, to which genus it 

 appears to belong. It is not improbable that it inhabits the leaves 

 of some of our northern native grasses and has escaped from 

 them to the oat-fields. It is so minute and so obscure in its char- 

 acter that it has probably been overlooked till now, but having 

 escaped to the oat-fields, and having been stimulated by the favor- 

 ing character of the season to an unusually abundant develop- 

 ment, its existence could no longer be concealed. Its effect on the 

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