BASISPORIUM GALLARUM MOLL., A PARASITE OF 
THE TOMATO! 
G. B. RAMSEY 
(WITH ELEVEN FIGURES) 
While studying the various diseases of the tomato which are 
found under transit and market conditions, the writer became 
interested in an unusual fungus which was isolated from the Cali- 
fornia crop of November 1919. Observations have been made in 
the Chicago market during the past three seasons to see whether 
the fungus recurred on California tomatoes, or whether it could 
be found on those from Florida, Cuba, Mexico, and other tomato 
shipping districts, but this particular fungus has not been isolated 
again. The potential seriousness of this fungus as a wound para- 
site of the tomato, however, and the fact that it has not been 
reported as a plant pathogen, seemed to make it desirable to publish 
this note. 
The original isolation was made from a soft, red, blister-like 
lesion near the blossom end of a ripe tomato. A luxuriant growth 
developed upon the nutrient agar plate, and a great number of spores 
were formed within a few days. The characteristic smooth, black, 
subspherical spores borne singly upon their club-shaped sporophores 
made it comparatively easy to place the fungus in the genus Basi- 
Sporium. 
Basis porium gallarum was established as a new genus and species 
in 1902 by MoLtiarD,’? in order to properly locate and describe a 
hyphomycete which he had found upon dead larvae of Lipara 
lucens Meigen, within galls which this insect produces on Phragmites 
communis Trin. He does not mention having found this fungus 
before, or of later finding it upon any other host. So far as the 
t Contribution from Research Laboratory on Market Diseases of Vegetables and 
Fruits; Department of Botany of University of Chicago and United States Department 
of Agriculture cooperating. 
2 MoLutarD, M., Bull. Soc. Myc. France, p. 167. 1902. 
325] {Botanical Gazette, vol. 74 
