A Stem Blight oe Field and Garden Peas 
5 
appeared with the death of the first shoots, and the present crop 
was largely new growth. The vines were heavily podded and 
thrifty. 
Mr. Thomas also visited a number of fields in the vicinity of 
Blanca and San Acacio on July 21 , 1915 . On sandy soil where 
the supply of moisture was limited, the peas had suffered heavily 
from blight. In two fields in particular, where the crop was planted 
on new ground, the disease destroyed fully three-fourths of the 
plants, but in the same locality on practically the same kind of soil 
where plenty of moisture was present, especially where an irriga¬ 
tion had been given shortly after the blight appeared, a large 
majority of the plants either threw out new branches, or, where 
they were not too badly infected, continued their growth. 
The first isolations of the causal organism were made from 
material collected at Antonito on June 4 , 1915 . 
VARIETIES OF FIELD PEAS 
The two varieties of field peas that are planted most extensively 
in the San Luis Valley are the native White Mexican and the 
Warshauer. 
The Mexican is probably a mixture of Canadian Beauty and 
Golden Vine with French Grey and possibly a few Early Britain. 
The Warshauer is a white pea that has been developed by the 
Warshauer-McClure Sheep Company, of Antonito, Colorado, by 
hand picking from peas that were two weeks earlier than the com¬ 
mon Mexican. It is supposed that the seed originally planted, 
when this selection was made, was one of the garden sorts usually 
considered as, “Earliest and Best”. However, the pea has been 
reared under field conditions and continually hand picked until the 
Warshauer pea is now a decidedly fixed type. It is a medium-vined 
early pea which begins to blossom when 6 to 8 inches high, result¬ 
ing in a good distribution of pods thruout the entire length of 
the vine. 
On June 15 , 1915 , we received a letter from the Empson 
Packing Company, of Longmont, Colorado, stating that they were 
sending us some pea vines which appeared to be attacked by a 
blight. They said further that nothing of the kind had ever 
occurred before in the history of their canning business, and that 
altho the first traces • had been noted only three or four days 
previously, the trouble was spreading rapidly. Already a number 
of fields were affected, and no little alarm was expressed over the 
possible outcome. 
This outbreak of the disease on garden peas, contemporaneous 
with that on field peas in an entirely different part of the State. 
