June 26, 1884. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
505 
repulsive. I have known persons admire toads, caress and fondle 
them, but I never remember anyone expressing delight at the 
fragrance of Stapelias. 
“ Now we have got to toads it is time to stop,” I fancy I 
bear my readers muttering. But blame not me for this in¬ 
fliction. I have simply been led into it. The real authors of 
these thoughts are “Non-Believer” and Mr. Luckliurst; but 
for their allurements I should have been this week, as I shall be 
next, a silent— Thinker. 
DISEASE OF GARDEN ANEMONES. 
.Garden Anemones are very subject in April, May, and June to the 
attacks of a destructive parasitic fungus, a parasite, which in this case is 
perennial—that is, the spawn or mycelium of the fungus is always within 
the plant invaded, either in the tissues of the perennial rootstock or in 
the growing stem and leaves. The pest,, which does not die with the 
dead leaves, is probably familiar to every grower of Anemones, and 
j or chamber is (or rather should be) divided into four. This specific name 
is a very bad one, for the mouth of each cup, as may be seen at B, is 
I generally lobed and torn in a very irregular manner, seldom or never 
presenting four parts only. 
The history of the fungus of Anemones is, as far as it is known, a 
simple one, and can be readily followed with the use of a microscope. 
We will therefore first take a very small fragment of a diseased leaf, 
place it under a power which magnifies fifty diameters, and look at 
the little fungus cups and dots on the lower surface. One yellow 
pustule will answer for all. Under the microscope each yellow spot 
or pustule is seen as a deep little cup. as at b, with frayed edges. 
The edges, which in the mature examples turn outwards, at first covered 
over the open part of the cup when it was in a ball condition. As 
maturity is reached the ball bursts and the frayed edges turn back as 
illustrated. The investing cup itself is composed of a single thickness of 
minute cells or bladders packed side by side like the cells of a honey¬ 
comb. These constituent cells or bladders are shown in the frayed 
edges. The cup itself is not an empty one, but, on the contrary, is full 
of microscopic globular balls, like minute grains of yellow pollen ; these 
bodies, also shown in the middle of the cup in the illustration at B, are 
the spores or reproductive bodies of the fungus, roughly answering to the 
during the last two years it has been unusually prevalent and viru¬ 
lent. Its effect on the host plant is often to promote an extraordinary 
but spurious appearance of luxuriance ; instead of a few leaves being pro¬ 
duced an enormous crop of healthy-looking leaves with long stems 
spring up from the ground, in too many instances accompanied by no 
flowers. Our illustration at fig. 116 shows a plant greatly reduced in this 
condition. 
No phenomenon is better known in plants and animals than a 
spuriously healthy appearance preceding disease. The greenest and 
healthiest Potato plants are often the first to fall before the murrain, and 
corn-mildew and bunt often appear in their worct form in plants of 
apparently the greatest promise. Unusually fine and large Pears often 
drop from the trees full of larvfe, and in the human family a bright 
healthy colour is often a forerunner of consumption and death. 
If a leaf is gathered from an Anemone suffering from disease, and 
the under surface is examined, it will be found, as at A, fig. 117, covered 
with a vast number of little yellow dots or cups, accompanied by an 
equally large number of minute black spots, the latter too small to be 
seen in the natural size illustration at A. 
The name of the fungus is AScidium quadrifidum, D.C., and we have 
not hitherto seen any published illustration of it. The name AHeidium 
is one form of a Greek word (it should properly be written (Eoidium) 
meaning a little chamber—a very appropriate name, as we shall see 
further on ; quadrifidum means that the mouth of the burst fungus cup 
seeds of flowering plants. The spores of course, like ovules, are female. 
Three of the black dots are also shown—one is marked at c. These are 
glutinous little spots, termed by botanists spermagonia, or male bodies 
containing male fertilising atoms named spermatia, roughly answering 
to the pollen of flowering plants. Some of the little round spores out of 
theA3;idium cup will be seen sticking on to the little black glutinous 
discs, or on the fine spermatic threads growing out of the discs at c. 
A difference must be noted here between the habit of the fungus 
and a flowering plant. In the latter, as every observer knows, the 
pollen (male) is littered out of the anthers on to the stigma (female), 
but in the fungus the spores (female) are littered out of the AScidium 
cup (female) on to the top of the spermagonium (male). In the flower¬ 
ing plant the pollen is free and the ovules fixed, in the fungus the 
ovules are free and the pollen fixed. This is not given as a rule 
without exception, but it is a rule which holds good for the fungus 
we are now examining. 
The fine lines seen outside the frayed edges of the AScidium cup 
represent the lines of junction of the cells which go to form the lower 
cuticle of the Anemone leaf. Here and there little openings occur, 
as in the three shown near D. These openings are the stomata or organs 
of transpiration of the plant ; through these little orifices the plant 
exhales water in the form of vapour. In dry weather the little openings 
keep closed, so that the plant may not perish by losing all its moisture 
in the form of vapour, but in damp weather the little mouths stand 
