United States or Mauritius ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Undoubtedly it is possible to bring forward very strong arguments in favour of regarding Heteromita as a plant. For example, there is a Fungus, an obscure and almost microscopic mould, termed Peronospora infestans.
Now, the essential cause of the potato disease is perfectly well understood. It is parasitical, the parasite being a fungus, the Peronospora infestans, which grows at the expense of the leaves, stems, and tubers of the plant until it destroys their vitality.
If it were not so, plants that are even now seriously damaged and kept in check by such pests would long ago have become extinct. Pursuing this theory it seems likely that the solanin of the potato is its natural protection against the disease caused by the fungus Phytophthora infestans.
It was a progress northward.... This plant, the Peronospora infestans, will only grow on the Solanum tuberosum, that is, the cultivated potato.... Just as plants of higher organization choose their soils, some growing in the water and some on land, so the Peronospora infestans chooses its host plant; and its soil is this species, the Solatium tuberosum.
Murray, "I instituted the following experiments, with the object of determining the mode of diffusion of the conidia of Peronospora infestans.
"I determined the nature of the conidia by comparing them with authentic conidia directly removed from diseased plants; by there being attached to some of them portions of the characteristic conidiaphores; and by cultivating them in a moist chamber, the result of which was, that five conidia, not having been immersed in the glycerine, retained their vitality, which they showed by bursting and producing zoospores in the manner characteristic of Peronospora infestans."
Word Of The Day