Disease in plantsWard, H. Marshall (Harry Marshall)
Science
Disease in plants
Ward, H. Marshall (Harry Marshall)
Plant diseases
_General and local disease--General death owing to cutting-off
supplies, etc.--Disease of organs--Tissue-diseases, e.g.
timber--Root-diseases--Leaf-diseases, etc.--Diseases of
Respiratory, Assimilatory, and other organs--Physiological and
Parasitic diseases--Pathology of the cell--Cuts--Cork--Callus
--Irritation--Stimulation by protoplasm--Hypertrophy._
On going more deeply into the nature of those changes in plants which we
term pathological or diseased, it seems evident that we must at the
outset distinguish between various cases. A plant may be diseased as a
whole because all or practically all its tissues are in a morbid or
pathological condition, such as occurs when some fungus invades all the
parts or organs--_e.g._ seedlings when completely infested by _Pythium_,
or a unicellular Alga when invaded by a minute parasite; or it may die
throughout, because some organ with functions essential to its life is
seriously affected--_e.g._ the roots are rotten and cannot absorb water
with dissolved minerals and pass it up to the shoot, or all the leaves
are infested with a parasite and cannot supply the rest of the plant
with organic food materials, in consequence of which parts not directly
affected by any malady become starved, dried-up, or poisoned or
otherwise injured by the results or products of disease elsewhere.
In a large number of cases, however, the disease is purely local, and
never extends into the rest of the organs or tissues--_e.g._ when an
insect pierces a leaf at some minute point with its proboscis or its
ovipositor, killing a few cells and irritating those around so that they
grow and divide more rapidly than the rest of the leaf tissues and
produce a swollen hump of tissue, or gall; or when a knife-cut wounds
the cambium, which forthwith begins to cover up the dead cells with a
similarly rapid growth of cells, the callus. Numerous minute spots due
to fungi on leaves, cortex, etc., are further cases in point, the
mycelium never extending far from the centre of infection.
Many attempts have been made to classify diseases on a basis which
assumes the essential distinction of the above cases, and we read of
diseases of the various organs--root-diseases, stem-diseases,
leaf-diseases, and so forth; or of the various tissues--timber-diseases,
diseases of the cambium, of the bark, of the parenchyma, and so on.
Furthermore, attempts have been made to speak of general functional
disease, of diseases of the respiratory organs, of the absorptive
organs, and so forth, as opposed to local lesions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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