| Description | Plowright writes: 'This Æcidium, which is common in this country upon Rumex hydrolapathum, Huds, obtusifolius, Linn., crispus, Linn., and conglomeratus, Murray, was regarded by Fuckel and Cooke as being a condition of Uromyces rumicis (Schum .), is now stated by Winter in his last work to be a condition of Puccinia magnusiana. During the present year I have conducted a series of cultures, in which the life history of this fungus has been carefully, if not laboriously, worked out, from which it appears that Æcidium rumicis bears the same relationship to Puccinia phragmitis (Schum.) (=P. arundinacea, D. C.) as Æcidium berberidis, Gmel., bears to Puccinia graminis, Perss. History of the Subject.—Winter, in 1875, showed that those botanists who had associated this Æcidium with the Uromyces rumicis, simply because these two fungi occurred upon the same host plant, were wrong, and that the fungus in question was the æcidiospore of Puccinia phragmitis. Stahl, in 1876, repeated Winter’s experiment, and confirmed it. Now it happens that there are two Pucciniœ common upon Phragmitis communis, the (Schum.), and P. magnusiana, Körn. In March, 1877, Schröter placed the spores of both these Pucciniœ upon Rumex hydrolapathum (the species Winter originally experimented with), and found that the Æcidium was only produced from P. magnusiana. Winter, in the “Kryptogamen Flora,” now in course of publication, accepts Schröter’s statement, and gives as the æcidiospores of Puccinia magnusiana, not only the Æcidium on Rumex hydrolapathum, but also on R. cripus, conglomeratus, obtusifolius, and acetosa, and adds a note to the effect that the Æcidium upon Rheum officinale has probably the same life history.'
Annotations in pencil and ink throughout.
Subject: Botany
Received 10 November 1883. Read 22 November 1883. Communicated by [William Turner] Thiselton-Dyer.
Written by Plowright at 1 King Street, King's Lynn [Norfolk, England].
A version of this paper was published in volume 36 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society as 'On the life history of the dock æcidium (Æcidiumrumicis, schlecth)'. |