Every pore, it is said, may contain from twenty to forty of these
plants, and each plant may shed a hundred seeds,[4] so that a single
shrub, infected with the disease, may disseminate it over the face of
a whole district; for, in the warm month of March, when the wheat is
attaining maturity, these plants ripen and shed their seeds in a
week, and consequently increase with enormous rapidity, when they
find plants with their pores open ready to receive and nourish them.
I went over a rich sheet of wheat cultivation in the district of
Jubbulpore in January, 1836, which appeared to me devoted to
inevitable destruction. It was intersected by slips and fields of
'alsi', which the cultivators often sow along the borders of their
wheat-fields, which are exposed to the road, to prevent trespass.[5]
All this 'alsi' had become of a beautiful light orange colour from
these fungi; and the cultivators, who had had every field destroyed
the year before by the same plant, surrounded my tent in despair,
imploring me to tell them of some remedy. I knew of none; but, as the
'alsi' is not a very valuable plant, I recommended them, as their
only chance, to pull it all up by the roots, and fling it into large
tanks that were everywhere to be found.
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