TECTONA 715 



saing {Bos sondaicus), which strip off the bark from teak poles and often kill 

 them outright. This form of damage is also perpetrated by bison and some- 

 times by deer. Of all wild animals, liowever, the elephant is the worst offender, 

 his depredations being noticeable to some extent in Malabar and on a larger 

 scale in Burma. The damage consists of breaking down or uprooting poles, 

 especially in plantations, which may be utterly ruined, and of stripping the 

 bark off trees. The latter form of damage is done by digging the tusks under 

 the bark, tearing it open, and then pulling it off in long strips. The bark is 

 often stripped off completely round the lower parts of the trees, many of which 

 are killed, while, if they survive, the wounds caused by the barking may admit 

 fire and rot. Mr. G. R. Jeffery ' estimated that in the Wapyudaung working 

 circle, Ruby Mines district, about 90 per cent, of the unsound trees in the 

 moister types of forest owed their unsoundness directly or indirectly to damage 

 by wild elephants, and concluded that it would be impossible to grow sound 

 teak in forest infested by these animals. 



Teak is subject to various insect attacks, perhaps the most serious of 

 which is that of the larva of Duomitus ceramicus, Wlk., a moth, which bores 

 into standing trees in Burma and causes the large holes erroneously termed 

 ' bee-holes '. Another lepidopterous borer, Cossus cadambae, Moore, does much 

 damage in Travancore. It tunnels down the interior of young stems one to 

 two years old, and the only remedy is to cut back the stems ; it also gains 

 admission through the wounds caused by lopping branches of trees for manure. 

 Of defoliators, the commonest are the caterpillars of Hyhloea puera, Cram., 

 and Pyrausta machaeralis, Wlk. The former consumes the whole leaf except 

 the midrib and the main lateral veins, while the latter skeletonizes the leaves, 

 eating the parenchyma and leaving all the veins. Another defoliator is the 

 caterpillar of Paliga dmnastesalis, Moore, the ' teak-leaf roller ', which, though 

 more local, does a considerable amount of defoliation in some localities, 

 particularly on dry hill-sides. 



The fungous pests of the teak have not been studied in any detail. In 

 Upper Burma the existence has been recorded of a thread-like blight on teak 

 leaves and of a fungus in the plantations of Katha which arrests the gro\\i.h 

 of the leading shoot, causing a nest-like formation ; cutting back has been 

 found effective in the case of the latter fungus. In the Gwethe reserve of 

 Toungoo in 1911-12 a group of teak trees 5 to 7 ft. in girth was found to be 

 attacked by a fungus, which had killed some of the trees ; specimens were 

 examined at Pusa by the Imperial Mycologist, who reported great destruction 

 to the woody elements by a fungus which appeared to be strongly parasitic, 

 but without the sporophores the fungus could not be identified. A mildew, 

 Uncinula Tectonae, Salmon, which attacks the leaves of the teak and of Cordia 

 Madeodii, appears to be fairly widespread in the Central Provinces. Mr. A. L. 

 Chatterji - notes that it attacks only the upper surface of the leaves, giving 

 them a characteristic bluish appearance. The fungus does not appear to do 

 any material damage. 



In some localities teak suffers from the attacks of Loranthus. This 

 parasite was at one time troublesome in the Nilambur plantations, but branches 



1 Working Plan for the Wapyudaung Working Circle, Ruby Mines Forest Division, 1911. 



2 Ind. Forester, xxxviii (1912), p. 28. 



