308 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, February 3, 1857. 
ON THE WHITE RUST OF CABBAGES. 
By the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, M.A., F.L.S. 
1 . Cystopus ( Uredo ) candidus, Lev., on Cabbage, natural size. 
2 . Threads of spores, with their sporophorcs and mycelium magnified. 
8. Saorn. gpowphoMi, &nd myosllum from a young plant raoro highly magnified. 
4. D.tto, from li'idnAmuranthi, Hchwsln, magnified is<u than the two preceding. The 
figure it tagen from a dried epeclmen, and consequently exhibits a less succulent rayoellum. 
There are few natural groups of plants 
which have not their own peculiar parasite, 
which lives ancl decays, indeed, for years 
unheeded by the common observer, until 
some season peculiarly suited to its growth 
arrives, when it is too abundant or noxious 
to escape the most careless. The present 
season has been very productive of different 
kinds of blight. Scarcely a bramble is to 
he seen which is not completely discoloured 
by rust; the withered aspect of the Bean 
crop has attracted general notice; not a row 
of garden Peas hut is covered with JErysiphc, 
and the ravages of Botrytis infeslans on the 
leaves and stems of Potatoes are unhappily 
too notorious and fatal. In my own district 
nothing can have been more general, and 
in many cases pernicious, or even destruc¬ 
tive, than the white rust ( Uredo Candida of 
authors) which is so common on cruci¬ 
ferous plants. They have, indeed, several 
other parasitical enemies; but this is, per¬ 
haps, the most general, and extends its 
visitations, either under the same or under 
very slightly different types, to several other 
families of plants. It has been found on 
plants belonging to several divisions of Com 
positae, on Euphorbiacese, Portulaceae, Mai 
pigiacese, Chenopodiaceaj, Convolvulaceos 
Caryophyllacete, Capparidese, Amaranthacrre 
and possibly on species of some other 
families to which I cannot at present refer 
Its geographical range is also most exten 
sive, extending in the northern hemisphere 
from high latitudes as far south as South 
Carolina, and it occurs in the Falkland 
Islands on Arabis Madoviana. It is be¬ 
sides frequently accompanied by Botrytis 
parasitica , which there is much reason to 
believe is sometimes as pernicious as its near 
ally B. infestans. 
It was in a species of the last-mentioned 
natural order (Amaranthaceae) that in the 
spring of the present year my attention was 
first turned, on the examination of speci¬ 
mens received from the Rev. M. A. Curtis, 
of Society Hill, South Carolina, to the 
peculiar structure of this parasite; and my 
observations have been at once confirmed 
and anticipated by my excellent friend Dr. 
Reveille, in an arrangement of Uredinetc, 
in a late number of Annales dcs Sciences 
Naturelles, which bears date December, 1847, 
hut which was not published till some 
months later. 
There was no difficulty at the time in 
procuring fresh specimens for examination, 
for so early as the end of March not a 
Cabbage or Colewort in niv garden was free 
from the white rust; and as the season 
advanced, the young as well as the nearly 
mature plants became affected, presenting 
frequently a disagreeable leprous appearance, 
deranging their growth, and sometimes ma¬ 
terially affecting their produce. At length, 
in the month of June, the flowering plants 
exhibited the disease to an extraordinary 
degree, and became so strangely distorted, 
that on a cursory inspection it would have 
been difficult to say to what species a 
gathered specimen belonged. Every part of 
the flowers had become immensely en¬ 
larged i the loaves of the calyx and petals 
assumed a gigantio size, the latter retaining 
in some measure thdr proper yellow tint j 
the stamens, too, wero distorted, and the 
pistil projested boyond the now perdstent 
