Abstract
A BACTERIAL disease has appeared in an East Anglian nursery on bushes of Forsythia spectabilis and F. intermedia. When, early in the year, the two-year-old branches are removed to the forcing house, the flower buds remain dormant or open imperfectly. Sometimes only a few twigs on a branch are affected; more often the branch as a whole remains dormant. Examination of the cut end of the shoot shows a stain in the wood, usually crescent-shaped, and varying in colour from scarlet to dark brown. At the time of cutting, the diseased branches cannot be distinguished superficially from healthy branches, but the stain in the wood betrays the presence of the disease. On any bush, healthy and diseased shoots arise from different stools. Excision of diseased branches (but not of the diseased stools) has been practised, but the bushes continue to die back, indicating that the disease can spread from the diseased to the healthy stools.
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References
Wormald, Annual Report E. Malling Res. Sta., 1935 (Sect. III), p. 145.
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METCALFE, G. A Bacterial Disease of Forsythia. Nature 144, 1050 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/1441050a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1441050a0
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