Identifier: bookofcorncomple00myri (find matches)
Title: The book of corn; a complete treatise upon the culture, marketing and uses of maize in America and elsewhere, for farmers, dealers, manufacturers and others--a comprehensive manual upon the production, sale, use and commerce of the world's greatest crop
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Myrick, Herbert, b. 1860
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, O. Judd company
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
culated with thedisease, the infection does not spread to all parts ofthe plant, but remains local, so that each pustule repre-sents a separate infection. The fungus does not growupon the surface, but inside the tissues, and by theirritation that it sets up causes the tissues to swell andform a pustule, the size depending upon the amountof nutriment that the fungus can extract from theplant, and the rapidity with which that part of theplant is growing at the time. For these reasons theears usually bear the largest masses of smut. For one hundred and fifty years or more it has beenthe practice of farmers in Europe to treat seed wheatwith blue vitriol to remove smut from it, and in lateyears a variety of practical and efficient methods forthe treatment of seed grain have come inco generaluse in both Europe and America. Until recently itlias been assumed that corn smut might be preventedby similar means, and it was not until the life historyof the corn smut fungus was fully worked out by
Text Appearing After Image:
286 THE BOOK OF CORN botanists, led by such eminent investigators as Meyen,Leveille, Tulasne brothers, De Bary, Kuehn, Fischervon Waldheim and Brefeld, that the futility of suchmethods for corn became apparent. Brefelds publica-tion in 1895 completed our knowledge of the essentialfeatures in the life history of the fungus, and for thefirst time made a rational procedure possible. The habits of the fungus are readily described.The spores, composing the black powder, are capableof growth as soon as ripe but for the most part do notgrow until June, or later, of the year following. Theygrow best in a nutrient solution, such as the drainingsfrom rich soil, or barnyard manure, and consequentlyit is the smut masses that fall to the ground in the fieldand are not wholly plowed under, or are distributedin yards where cattle are fed dry stalks, that chieflyfurnish material for the spread of the disease. When the spores germinate they produce a white,mold-like growth of limited extent, on which

Note About Images