352 



SOME New records of Fungi for South Australia. 



By T. G. B. OsBORN, M.Sc, Professor of Botany, University 



of Adelaide. 



[Read September 9, 1915.] 



The fungi of South Australia have hitherto been neglected 

 as a field of study, as indeed have most of the cryptogams. In 

 the present note some forty species are recorded, the occur- 

 rence of which I cannot find in the literature, though many 

 are common — a few exceedingly so. The majority have already 

 been recorded from the other States, but five have not, so far 

 as I am aware, been recorded for Australia before. One of 

 these occurred on a native plant in the field ; the remainder 

 are pathogenic fungi attacking various cultivated plants, that 

 have no doubt been iiuported with the seed or by other means. 

 Fortunately, none of them promises to be very serious, but 

 the fact that they have been introduced serves to show how 

 necessary are the Commonwealth regulations governing the 

 importation of plants — regulations that have hitherto been 

 successful in preventing the introduction of several of the 

 more serious European and American diseases of cultivated 

 plants. However, one of these new Australian records merits 

 special mention. It is the fungus causing a wilt of tomato 

 plants, that I have provisionally referred to Entorrhiza 

 ( Schinzla ) solaiii, Faiit. E nforrhizn solani. wsiS briefly 

 described by F. Fautrey in the "Revue Mycologique" for 1896 

 as causing a wilt of potato plants, but no further account hav- 

 ing appeared, Sorauer ("Handbuch der Pflanzenkrankheiten," 

 3rd ed., vol. ii., p. 335) regards the results with scepticism. 

 The symptoms described for the wilt of tomatoes and the 

 occurrence and appearance of the spores agree closely with 

 Fautrey 's account of the potato disease, so that for the present 

 I have referred the fungus to his species. 



"The Fungus Flora of Australia, '^ by Dr. M. C. Cooke, 

 appeared in 1892, but three years later a somewhat more 

 complete list was published by Mc Alpine. I have, there- 

 fore, given references to the latter by number where possible, 

 to render it easy to ascertain the range of a species in the 

 other States. Where more recent works of reference upon 

 special groups of Australian fungi have appeared these are 

 also cited. 



