Bacterial Gall on Millet ia Plant 

 (Bacillus Milletiae n. sp.) 



By 



Koickiro Kawakanii and Suehiko Yoshida 



(With Plate II) 



In the Summer of 1917, our atttention was attracted to the gall 

 on the Milletia plant, which was found in the garden of a horti- 

 culturist at Nishigahara, a suburb of Tokyo, since we had an interest 

 on studying the mechanism of the growth of plant gall. 



The gardner told us that almost all the old Milletia plant may 

 suffer from this trouble, and later we found it at Okitsu and Kameido 

 on many plants. In our country, as Milletia £oribunda is one of the 

 garden flowers and is planted in parks as well as in home gardens, it 

 would be valued highly for gardners, if we could prevent or remedy 

 this disease. In Italy R. Pavarino reported that non liquefying coccus 

 causes canker on Wistaria sinensis. Though, having no original report 

 we can not compare the features of the gall and detailed characters of 

 the organism, our causal organism seems different from it on gelatine 

 liquefying character and rod shaped form. 



The Symptoms 



On the stem of the Milletia plant, there occur woody hard knots 

 of various sizes measuring 5-10 mm. in diameter. Their forms are 

 irregular round and sometimes reaches to 10 cm. or more. The forma- 

 tion of this trouble is generally limited to the old stems and have its 

 origin at the cambium layer. 



The cells of young knots do not hypertrophied, and are small 

 rectangular forms, with green cell sap. 



Without staining no parasites can be seen but on glucose agar 

 plate, there appeared a microorganism which produces yellow colonies 

 in almost pure culture after 3 days by 30°C. 



Inoculation experiments with this organism on Milletia floribunda 

 gave typical tumor growth from which the same organism was 

 reisolated. 



