Discovery?

Garden Magic — or a Valuable Horticultural Discovery?

We are indebted for the following in teresting article to Mr. Charles Reed, a well-known horticulturist, of Western Samoa.

A PLANT of the lily family which may prove of value and importance in the prevention and eradication of the various forms of plant-diseases which are caused by “fungi” has been investigated by the writer at Apia, Western Samoa, For many years past, the Samoans have made it a practice to plant at the base of all their bread-fruit trees and other food-trees two small bulbs of a species of lily called in Samoan “Lau Talo-Talo.”

These bulbs, the natives assert, will effec tively prevent attack by the common fun goid disease Limu-mea (Fomes semitostos), a deadly parasitic fungus, which at tacks and rapidly kills many of the tropi cal economic trees and plants, such as the breadfruit tree, hovea-rubber trees, cocoa and coffee trees. Jungle trees and garden vegetables are equally liable to attack by this fungus.

When the root, or mycelium, of the fungus comes into contact with the root of any living tree, the tree is usually doomed, for, in a short space of time, the white, cotton-like medium or root will envelop the living roots of its victim, work up through the cambium (or bark) and form ring-worm-like concentric rings around the base of the tree, which destroy the sap and kill the tree, giving off the characteristic evil odour of the toadstool.

Eventually the fungus may fruit, and produce spores.

The usual method is to dig a trench around the affected tree and treat by burning or liming. In Samoa, however, the natives simply plant their prophylac tic bulb, the Lau Talo-Talo, and so ward off attack.

What Is “Lau Talo-Talo”?

Originally, it was a Samoan discovery.

The idea of a lily bulb being efficacious against deadly fungoid plant diseases was ridiculed by the two or three whites who had heard of the native practice. The bulb, so the writer was informed, was the common caladium of our gardens.

At the Government Agricultural Experi mental Station the writer permitted his cadets to plant 50 breadfruit trees. Each tree had planted at its base two Lau Talo- Talo bulbs, one on either side of the tree.

On a nearby section, another fifty breadfruit saplings were planted, with no protecting bulbs.

Both sections were cultivated in the same manner. One year later, those areas were examined for disease by the writer.

He found that there was no sign of fungus disease among the breadfruit trees planted with the Lau Talo-Talo, while in the case of the other section 27 trees had been lost by Limu-mea, or fungus.

The result was encouraging, and led to further experiments, which were carried out among cocoa trees and tomato plants, and with the same result. In no instance did I find trees or plants attacked or de stroyed by the parasitic fungus, where the prophylactic bulb had been planted.

I later found the Lau Talo-Talo bulb in flower, and was able to identify the plant as a native of Asia (C. Asiaticum), an exotic to Samoa.

The writer has also examined a large number of breadfruit trees planted in the ordinary course of things by the natives themselves (always with this “protecting” bulb) but never so far has he found a tree killed by fungus disease.

Hence, witchcraft or superstition, or garden-magic, or whatever it may be termed, becomes at least a subject of interest.