THE BLACKBERRY PEST

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7301, 3 December 1910, Page 2

THE BLACKBERRY PEST

, Considerable interest is being taken in .Taranaki in an alleged natural enemy of the blackberry, and several meetings have been- held in regard to the matter. Particulars of this enemy of the blackberry have been furnished in ■ the following communication from America to the Taranaki Agricultural Society:—The disease to which you refer is probably our iorange rust of the blackberry, which very oiteu partly destroys and sometimes wholly destroys plantations of certain varieties of cultured blackberries in this 1 country. ■ It is a native disease on our wild blackberries and other species of bramble. Our interest in this disease has been to find means lor controlling the disease, preventing its injuring tho blackberries, which axe cultivated , for their fruit. They are only occasionally a pest, yielding readily to cultivation. It might be possiole to introduce tho orange rust of the blackberry into your country by the same methods which are used in importing, nursery . stock—that is, take the dormant infected plants, pack them in moss, shipping them by sea and then, transplanting so as to make the plants grow where introduction is desired. The fife history of the blackberry fungus is not too 1 well worked up. It might not

be possible to secure full virulence of this disease without getting it to fruit in its mature form, which is supposed to bo puccinia pcciante. The destructive form of’ this fungus is the "aocidial." The mycelium of this form lives perennially in the stem and undergrown root stocks of the blackberry.