May 26,1923 
Graminicolous Species of Helminthosporium 
691 
NOMENCLATURE 
In 1891, a brief anonymous account {136) appeared concerning Helmin¬ 
thosporium Sorokinianum, Sacc. (in litt), a fungus which Sorokin {135) 
had found occurring on the spikes of wheat and rye in the South Ussurian 
region in Russia. The spores were later described in Saccardo's {128, 
V. 10, p. 413-416) diagnosis of the species as— 
acrogenis, ovato-fusoidetis, majusculis, 80-100 x 30, rufobrunneis, 5-10 septatis, 
passim lenissime constrictis, rectis curvulisce. 
This characterization applies fairly well to the spores found occurring 
on wheat spikes in the United States with reference to shape and 
septation. The dimensions given also are not outside of the ranges in 
dimensions found in this country, the figures given for length correspond¬ 
ing closely enough, although 30 constitutes a maximum width (pi. 18, 
Fe) not attained by a large proportion of conidia. It appears quite 
probable, therefore, that the Russian fungus is identical with the Ameri¬ 
can form. However, because the spores of the latter, when fully matured 
and in a living condition, are dark brown or olivaceous rather than 
reddish brown, the identity of the two forms can not be regarded as 
firmly established. Therefore, in spite of the priority of Saccardo*s 
binomial, the writer believes it advisable to treat it as a probable synonym. 
In 1909, Pammel (103) recorded the occurrence during the preceding 
season of a barley disease in Iowa differing from the stripe disease. 
A more complete account of this trouble was published in 1910 by 
Pammel, King, and Bakke {104), in which the casual organism was 
described as having fascicled fuscous brown septate conidiophores, 
8 to 10 /x wide, bearing a large cylindrical dark brown spore, with 7 to 12 
divisions, and measuring 15 to 20 by 105 to 130 fx. The fungus was re¬ 
garded as closely related morphologically to Helminthosporium teres^ 
but in the absence of comparative cultural studies was provisionally 
given a new specific name, sativum. Later, however, one of the authors, 
Bakke (<5), presumably as a result of cultural experiments and in con¬ 
formity with opinion secured from Saccardo and Ravn, definitely referred 
the disease to H. teres Sacc. Although indications are not wanting that 
Bakke in this later work was dealing to some extent with the latter 
organism, the figures as well as the text leave no room for doubt that 
he was in the main concerned with the same disease and the same parasite 
that had been discussed in the preceding Iowa publication. Inasmuch 
as H. teres and the fungus causing “ late blight’' of barley are not identical, 
representing, indeed, two quite distinct congeneric types, it would seem 
that Bakke was in error in repudiating H. sativum as an independent 
binomial. 
In 1918, Lindfors {8^ described from Sweden as Helminthosporium 
acrothecioides a fungus he had discovered on barley seed that had been 
germinated on filter paper. Its morphological features correspond 
completely with those of the American fungus developing under the warm, 
damp conditions obtaining in germination apparatus, when, as the 
writer has observed in hundreds of instances, discolored barley seeds 
or wheat seeds affected with “black point” are incubated on moist 
filter paper. The figures and the characterization of the conidia as 
“narrow ellipsoid to spindle-shaped, with blunt ends, 60 to 95 by 20 to 24 
ju, with 7 to 9 septa, and a thick, dark olive brown epispore,” apply so 
well to the American form that Lindfors’s binomial may very s^ely be 
regarded as a synonym. 
