150 



EOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



XXIX. Note on a Disease in Celery. 

 By the Eev. M. J. Berkeley, M.A., B.L.S. 



Some celery-leaves were brought up to South Kensington on 

 the 7th of last September by Mr. Wheeler, with the information 

 that not only was his own crop almost a failure, but plants which 

 he had sent to a friend in Cambridgeshire were similarly affected, 

 while other plants in the same garden, which came from a different 

 source, were healthy. It was at once clear that some fungus had 

 affected the plants ; and it is well known that vegetables are often 

 attacked by parasitic fungi in a very early stage of growth, and 

 that in the case of perennial plants, as, for example, the Violet 

 and Achillea Ptarniica, when once they are affected, the disease 

 may recur for an indefinite period. 



On the 4th of October a whole plant was brought up, which was 

 thoroughly infested with fungus, and was in consequence spongy and 

 flaccid, and utterly unfit for food. The bases of the leaves, how- 

 ever, were not distorted. The root, moreover, was hard and woody. 



It is the first time that I have ever seen celery attacked in this 

 way ; and the fungus which is the cause of the evil appears to be 

 uncommon. It is figured in the sixth posthumous volume of 

 of Corda's ■ Icones,' with the characters — 



Sori large, confluent, rufous brown, pulverulent, seated on annular yel- 

 lowish spots; spores oblong, uniseptate, constricted in the middle 

 with an even thick epispore ; nucleus hollow, somewhat plicate ; pe- 

 dicel short, attenuated, white. 



It is said to occur, but very rarely, in gardens at Prague. Spe- 

 cimens are published by Babenhorst (no. 693) under the name of 

 Puccinia Apii, Bresenius (gathered at Brankfort-on-Maine by 

 Bresenius), and by Buck el in ' Bungi Bhenani exsiccati ' (no. 362). 

 The parasite is in turn attacked by a minute parasite Darluca 

 filum, which has minute fusiform uniseptate spores *0006 of an 

 inch long, furnished at either end with a short hyaline point. 



There is another parasite on celery-leaves which it may be well 

 to record, though it has not hitherto occurred in this country. 

 Specimens are published by Buckel (no. 117) under the name of 

 Cercospora penicillata, Bresenius. The fungus grows, but rarely, 

 on dry discoloured spots on the leaves, and has very long multi- 

 septate spores, by which character he says it is distinguished from 

 Passalora of Cesati. 



Bungi were not, however, the only enemies of celery-plants last 

 year ; the celery-fly was very active about the leaves, doing a 



