Stem-End Rot and Gummosis 
TWO FUNGOUS DISEASES OF CITRUS. 
H. S. Fawcett. 
Mr. President a Ladies and Gentlemen : 
In addition to the many unfavorable 
conditions to which the fruit grower 
is liable, such as frost or scorching heat, 
floods or drought, or hurricanes, there 
are the ever-present insect and fungous 
enemies, new and destructive kinds of 
which are liable to get into his orchard 
at any moment without his notice. 
It is with two fungous enemies of cit¬ 
rus trees, that have been known and stud¬ 
ied during the past one or two years, that 
this paper proposes to deal. The two 
diseases associated with these two fungi, 
are Stem-End Rot and Gummosis. Stem- 
End Rot is a comparatively new disease. 
Gummosis has been known for many 
years, but the fungus associated with it 
has only recently been studied. To the 
practical orchardist, the minute details in 
regard to these fungi are of little interest. 
He is interested in them just in so far as 
a knowledge of the habits of growth and 
life history of the organisms enables him 
to intelligently control them. At the 
same time, he may realize the importance 
of careful and painstaking research bv 
the Plant Pathologist into the minutest 
details of the organisms causing them, be¬ 
cause of the fact that this knowledge 
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often enables him to combat a disease at 
once, which has baffled him for a life 
time. It is so with these diseases of the 
orange. A knowledge of their cause is 
suggesting effective means of controlling 
them. 
WHAT ARE FUNGI? ! 
/ 
It is scarcely necessary to say that the 
fungi are plant growths of very low order 
and include such names as moulds, mil¬ 
dews, smuts, rusts, toadstools, mush¬ 
rooms, puff balls, etc. The different 
kinds of fungi, as is so well known, are 
exceedingly variable in size, from those 
i-iooo of an inch, to those a foot or more 
in greatest diameter, and in form they 
vary from those comparable in size to a 
hen’s egg, to those that could be likened 
in form to a cabbage palmetto, an oak 
tree, a towering red wood tree, or an In¬ 
dian mound. The two fungi which have 
to do with Stem-End Rot and Gummosis 
of citrus trees are both so small that they 
can rarely be seen on the trees even with 
the hand lens, and only the effects of their 
work appear. When growing in large 
quantities, however, they appear like dif¬ 
ferently colored moulds, which are seen 
