IV 
CLOVES 
169 
topped, but in Amboyna and other parts of the Eastern 
Archipelago, where it grows to 20 or as much as 40 ft. 
in height, it is advisable to top it so that the buds can 
be easily reached by the pickers. Besides this work 
there is little to be done to the plantation except weed- 
ing where necessary when the plants are young, and 
cleaning the trees of parasitic mistletoes, and of moss 
and epiphytic ferns, to which they are rather liable, 
destroying borers and other pests, and manuring, until 
the trees commence to produce the flower buds. 
PESTS AND DISEASES 
There are not many recorded diseases of the clove 
tree, but one of those known is a very troublesome and 
destructive pest. It is a parasitic alga known as 
Cephaleurus my coidea, Karst en, or “ Eed-spot.” 
The attack of this parasite appears to the naked eye 
as a dark red spot visible on both surfaces of the leaf, 
more or less rounded or oval in outline, and from about 
yV ill* across to ^ in. in diameter. Commencing quite 
small, it increases gradually in size ; eventually the 
spot becomes hard and black in the centre, with the oil 
glands much enlarged and swollen, and at last the centre 
becomes dead, greyish in colour, surrounded by a black 
and outer red ring. The dead portion falls out, leaving 
a circular hole in the leaf The spots are scattered over 
the leaf usually nearer to the edge than to the centre, 
and frequently run into each other. The leaf is often 
attacked when it has just opened, and before it has 
attained its full green colouring, and in many cases it 
appears that the bud is attacked and quite often destroyed. 
In any case the attack seems to commence in the early 
stages of the opening of the leaf At length, when the 
leaf is getting yellow and dying, the alga commences to 
fruit on the under side of the leaf In the blackened 
spot can be seen with a lens some fine white hairs, 
tipped with yellow. On examination with the micro- 
scope these hairs are seen to be fine filaments, bearing at 
