FLORIDA ( STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
75 
it a little in September. At that time he 
said the fruit as they hung on the tree 
showed circles around the stems which 
ripened up sooner than the other part of 
the fruit. This would indicate that the 
fungus may make its attack at least as 
early as the first or middle of September 
while the fruit is still somewhat imma¬ 
ture. The same grower said that the rot 
was very noticeable by the middle of Oc¬ 
tober and at its height by the first week 
in November. Long hot dry spells, rain, 
and cooler weather seemed to check it. 
As said before, the symptoms of the de¬ 
cay usually show most on dropped or¬ 
anges after they have lain for some time 
upon the ground. In most of these cases 
it is reasonable to suppose that the infec¬ 
tion with the fungus is the direct cause 
the dropping and that the signs of 
the decay develop later after the fruit has 
dropped to the ground. In several in¬ 
stances where suspected fruit was picked 
from the tree and laid out on the table 
in the laboratory, they afterward develop¬ 
ed the decay. The fact, too, that it took 
from a week to three weeks for the soft¬ 
ening to show after fruits were inocu¬ 
lated with the fungus shows that infec¬ 
tion must take place one to three weeks 
before there are any outward signs of de¬ 
cay. 
If the decay of fruit showed only on 
the trees and on the ground it would be 
serious enough, but this is not the end of 
the trouble. The decay develops on the 
way to market in spite of any of the 
known precautions used for preventing 
decay from the blue mold or other rots. 
This is the most serious phase of the 
trouble. As has been indicated, the inves¬ 
tigations as to the cause brought out the 
fact that it could be started directly by 
inoculations of a species of fungus. A 
study of this fungus was made to find 
out what its nature was. At first we 
thought it might prove to> be the same one 
that causes the Brown Rot of lemons in 
California, but after some study I de¬ 
cided it was a species of Achlya. The spe¬ 
cies of the genus .Achlya are water 
moulds. They live normally in ponds and 
ditches, and fresh water streams. None 
of them as far as I know have before 
been known to be parasitic on plants, al¬ 
though some of the forms related to Achl¬ 
ya are parasites of insects and of plants. 
Two questions will probably present 
themselves to your mind. Where did the 
fungus come from in the first place and 
how does it get up into the trees to in¬ 
fect the oranges ? To both of these I will 
have to say I do not know, except that it 
evidently lives in the soil. I am trying 
to answer the latter question as to how it 
gets into the trees. The fact is that it 
gets to the tree and just how is only a 
conjecture. I find in some cases 
kinds of bunches or coils of fungus that 
develop when the fungus grows up into 
the air, out of liquid cultures. It is my 
theory that these act as a sort of spores 
to carry the fungus from the soil or from 
previously rotted fruit to the fruit on the 
trees, but this remains to be proved. 
INOCULATION EXPERIMENTS. 
I shall now confine myself to facts and 
leave theories and speculations. The de¬ 
cay is highly infectious as will be seen by 
examinations of the results of some inoc- 
