Fungus Diseases of Citrus Trees in Australia, and their Treatment

Abstract

THIS is one of the many useful publications dealing with plant diseases issued by the Victoria Department of Agriculture. According to statistics given, the cultivation of orange and lemon trees is extending rapidly, and one successful lemon grower considers that instead of paying 62,498l. annually for oranges and lemons, the colony could not only produce sufficient for home consumption, but could also supply the half of Europe. Under these circumstances the appearance of a work of the kind under consideration is most opportune, more especially as it is stated to be written for the benefit of growers. It is therefore somewhat disappointing to find that a considerable portion of the text is devoted to technical descriptions of new species of fungi, a subject of no interest whatever to cultivators, more especially as many of the species enumerated are simply saprophytic forms, whose presence can do no injury. The enumeration of such species is, from a scientific standpoint, of great value; but they are altogether out of place in a work which should place before practical men the outcome of scientific research in language divested of scientific technicalities. The author considers it essential that each fungus should possess a popular name in addition to its scientific one, and there is some justification for this idea, especially when such names are of local origin, and express a definite idea, as “collar-rot,” “wither-top,” &c., but it is more than doubtful whether the English rendering of the scientific name, as “West Australian Septoria,” or “Gloeosporium-like Colletotrichum,” will be adopted by the fruit grower. Fifty-one species of fungi found on citrus trees are described as new to science; this is a somewhat daring piece of work in the comparative absence of literature and herbaria. It must be borne in mind that the fact of a fungus not agreeing with any species recorded in Saccardo's “Sylloge Fungorum” by no means justifies an author in describing it as new to science.

Fungus Diseases of Citrus Trees in Australia, and their Treatment.

By D. McAlpine. Pp. 132; 19 plates. (Melbourne: Brain, Government Printer, 1899.)