CEREALS 



Cereal Smuts in General 



These diseases show themselves to the farmer as dark 

 to black, dusty or hard, masses occupying the places where 

 the grain should be or involving also the near-by flower 

 parts, glumes (chaff), etc., and in some cases the leaves 

 and stem as well. The smut mass consists almost wholly 

 of the spores of the causal fungus. This fungus gains 

 entrance to the plants when they are in a susceptible con- 

 dition of development, the time varying with different 

 kinds of plants, and grows within the plant as an active 

 parasite, drawing its nourishment from its involuntary host. 

 When the host plant has attained the proper age, and 

 correspondingly, too, the fungus has reached its proper 

 stage of maturity, the disease becomes apparent to" the 

 eye as the only too familiar smut. 



Smut spores under suitable conditions of moisture, food, 

 and heat sprout, and produce smaller spores, sporidia, 

 which, if they fall upon the proper host plant in the proper 

 period of its development, penetrate into it and grow. 

 The host plant may or may not outgrow its enemy. In 

 any event, its presence is not apparent to the naked eye 

 until the period of maturity arrives again, and another 

 crop of dark-colored spores is produced. 



Kinds of smut. — In all there are many kinds of smuts. 

 Something more than 600 species are now recorded. Over 



319 



