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News Letter 
February, 1951 
Gentle Reader: 
With the arrival of February, most Souther- 
ners feel that Spring is practically here, even 
though the inhabitants of Minnesota are just now 
getting the furnace to working good for the winter. 
Spring is the big crown rot time, though, 
whether North or South, and questions in regard 
to this pestiferous malady have already begun 
to pour In. 
Q. My violet always had such large tall thick 
stalks with such huge healthy blooms but now it is 
blooming again but the stalks are short, very thin, 
and fragile, and blooms are half the usual size 
and don’t last but a couple of days, then wither— 
The leaves on the plant seem to be lifeless—just 
lay on the rim of the pot. What to do? Mrs. 
W.E.R., Arkansas. 
A. This is a perfect description of the slow, 
insidious type of crown or root rot. As the decay 
gradually works into the stalk, cutting off the 
passage of moisture from the roots into the leaves, 
the foliage and blossoms (if any) become limp. 
If one can summon the courage to go ahead and 
operate on a stricken plant when this limpness 
is first noticed, the plant can nearly always be 
saved. The temptation, however, is to “ignore it 
and it will go away’”—except that crown-rot never 
does. The decay, on the contrary, continues to 
creep relentlessly into the crown until it reaches 
the base of the leaves. Itis at this juncture that 
the plant appears to moult, as it were, dropping its 
foliage at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, in- 
experienced violet collectors don’t suspect that 
anything is wrong until the disease enters this 
final phase. By this time only a shell of healthy 
tissue is left, and the plant is so debilitated that it 
seldom has the strength to form new roots of its 
own, even though the brown matter is carefully 
scraped out. 
Therefore, chillun, mind the crispness of your 
plant. Old hands at the violet 
game habitually finger foliage a 
(just a light flip of the thumb es 
will tell you all you want to Q Q 
know) and save themselves a ) #: 
heap of trouble thereby. Of 
course, if you develop this habit, ae 
you must expect to undergo a cer- , 
tain amount of torture when you 
attend violet shows where “DO 
NOT TOUCH THE PLANTS” signs are prominent- 
ly displayed. But then you can’t have everything. 
Copyright, February, 1951, Russell Gray 
>> (ED ED OI -S 
