84 



from rusted plants and, by growing them in sterile globes, 

 proved that the rust was not transmitted through the seed. (13) 

 Nevertheless, in 1930, the year before Eriksson's death, in his 

 second edition of Fungous Diseases of Plants, "mycoplasm" 

 is described in the case of a variety of fungi, including hollyhock 

 rust. (28) The theory is interesting as possibly a lingering trace 

 of an earlier idea that fungi were a lower order of plant life 

 spontaneously evolved by a diseased plant. (48) 



Today, with the "Mycoplasm Theory" tabled, hollyhock 

 rust still offers problems to the botanists. While rusts as a tribe 

 specialize in different spore forms in order the better to keep in 

 connection with their hosts, hollyhock rust bears only teleuto- 

 spores. The story of its development is not yet fully told. 

 Rusted hollyhock leaves offer their abundance for the problems. 

 (3, 4) _ 



Gardening and rust collecting are incompatible pursuits. 

 This fact is brought home to me when one of the students in 

 horticulture suggests cutting off and burning the "cedar apples" 

 which prove the presence of rust infection in the red cedar trees 

 in front of the library. Cut them ofT, and I should have to go 

 farther afield to demonstrate rust galls to a class; or to watch 

 the hard, brown balls take on the appearance of orange-colored 

 chrysanthemums when, on some rainy day in May, the spores 

 push out in gelatinous ribbons. Red cedar flourishes in the sandy 

 environs of Norton and the coming of these orange, fungous 

 balls on the dark trees along the country roads is, to the initi- 

 ated, one of the annual spring events. 



These spores, like those of the hollyhock rust, are teleuto- 

 spores: "final spores" in the life cycle: but cedar rust is a plant of 

 more diverse habits than the hollyhock rust. The spores require 

 a change of host; they will produce infection only upon apple 

 leaves. On the apple leaves the parasite ripens two other forms 

 of spores: spermatia which ooze out on the leaf surface in tiny 

 drops of nectar, and aecidiospores which form in little "cluster 

 cups," aecidia. The latter spores carry infection back to the 

 cedars and complete an interesting even though a vicious cycle. 

 Thus the name of this rust is properly cedar-apple rust although 

 the term, "cedar apple," has come to be applied to the galls 

 upon the cedar trees. The apple host seems to fare worse than 

 the cedar. Perhaps the shorter life term of the spring generation 



