224 DISEASES OF CULTIVATED PLANTS 



seed. A whitish stroma forms over the ovary, which bears 

 very minute conidia, which are mixed with a sweet liquid that 

 attracts insects, by whom the conidia are carried from one 

 flower to another. As the conidia germinate at once, many 

 flowers become infected. After the conidia are dispersed 

 the stroma grows into a purplish-black, horn-shaped body or 

 sclerotium, known as ergot. These fall to the ground and 

 remain until the following spring, when they give origin to 

 the stalked ascospore stage, the spores of which are dispersed 

 by wind. 



EPICHLOE (Fries.) 



Stroma sessile, effused, girdling the leaf sheaths of grasses, 

 bright-coloured, at first bearing conidia ; perithecia immersed, 

 asci 8-spored ; spores needle-shaped, septate. 



Reed-mace fungus. This very peculiar fungus, called 

 Epichioc typhina (Tub), attacks most kinds of grass, which it 

 strangles, and produces an appearance resembling the inflores- 

 cence of a reed-mace or a bulrush. The sheath of the 

 upper leaf is attacked and becomes surrounded by a crust or 

 stroma half an inch to an inch in length. This stroma is white 

 at first, and at this stage produces myriads of conidia which 

 germinate at the moment of maturity, and thus ensure the 

 rapid spread of the disease, which frequently assumes the 

 proportions of an epidemic. At a later stage the stroma 

 changes to a deep orange colour, and an ascigerous form of 

 fruit replaces the conidial condition, the surface of the stroma 

 becoming rough with the projecting mouths of the perithecia. 

 Plants that are attacked do not bloom, the inflorescence 

 being arrested and remaining enclosed in the sheath. 

 According to Prillieux when hay containing a considerable 

 amount of diseased grass is eaten by horses, it proves injurious 

 and causes coughing. 



Stroma entirely encircling the culm of various grasses, 

 1-3 cm. long, at first whitish and bearing minute, hyaline, 

 oval conidia, 4^5X3 n- The stroma then becomes tawny 

 orange, minutely granular from the projecting mouths of the 

 perithecia; asci cylindrical, slightly constricted below the 

 truncate apex, 130-200X7-10 /i ; spores filiform, hyaline, 

 very delicately multi-septate, 130-150 X i-i'5 /', arranged in a 

 parallel bundle in the ascus. 



