Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

I’m trying a different tack on Newstalk ZB.    It’s something I use with teachers and kids at school: the meaning of scientific names of living organisms helps to remind us how certain creatures operate or how they can be identified.   Once you get that in your gardening vocabulary it becomes a lot easier to prevent or control the problem that’s causing you regular troubles.   Taphrina is the name of a parasitic fungi (belonging to the family Taphrinaceae) that produce asci in a superficial hymenium having an indeterminate margin and cause leaf curling and malformations like blisters on various vascular plants.   It literally tells us it’s a name of Rotter-Fungus that causes curling, malformation, and blisters.   The second name (deformans) repeats the symptoms: it causes deformations. That tells us it is a real bummer to have on your plants (especially on stonefruit: peaches, nectarines, plums, peachcotts, peacherines, apricots, etc).  Ladies and gentlemen: we’re talking ab