MASSARIA 245 



Rough blackish outgrowths occur on the branches which 

 present a ringed or corrugated appearance, due to arrest of 

 growth and shortening of the internodes. These outgrowths, 

 under a pocket-lens, are seen to be covered with the black 

 fruiting bodies of the fungus, embedded in a black stroma. 



Perithecia densely gregarious, globose or obconic, mouth 

 at first prominent. Asci very long, 8-spored, surrounded by 

 paraphyses. Spores elliptic-oblong, 4-celled, ochraceous- 

 brown, 2 1-23 x 7-8 /*. 



Cavara, Zeitschr. Pflanzenkr., 7, p. 321 (1897). 



Cucurbitaria labumi (De Not.) attacks branches of 

 laburnum, and on certain occasions, as when the branches 

 have been cracked by frost, or injured by insects, acts as a 

 true parasite, forming large cake-like stromata that rupture 

 the bark. 



Spores elliptic-fusoid, muriform, slightly constricted at the 

 middle, brownish-yellow, 26-36x9-12 /*. 



MASSARIA (De Not.) 



Perithecia black, immersed, beak protruding ; asci often 

 8-spored ; spores elongated, 2-many-septate, brown, sur- 

 rounded by a hyaline mucilaginous border, usually large : 

 paraphyses slender. 



Stem disease of tea plant. Petch has described a disease 

 of the tea plant in Ceylon, caused by Massaria theicola 

 (Petch). Diseased bushes usually die gradually, branch by 

 branch, and when dug up there is no sign of mycelium or of 

 decay, but if the stem is split open the wood is found to be 

 discoloured and dark, due to the presence of the blackish- 

 violet mycelium of the fungus, which advances along the 

 channels by which the water ascends in the stem. The dis- 

 eased wood is just as solid as the rest. 



Perithecia gregarious, immersed in the cortex, black ; asci 

 narrowly cylindrical, 1 20-160 X 20 /x, 8-spored ; spores hyaline, 

 2-septate at maturity, olive, 17-22x6 \i. 



Petch, Roy. Bot. Garden, Ceylon, 4, Circ. No. 4 (1907). 



