cedar-apple rust

cedar-apple rust, plant disease that primarily affects eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and various apple and crabapple species (genus Malus) in North America and that is caused by the fungus Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae. Both hosts, the junipers and the apples, are required for completion of the rust fungus’s two-year life cycle. The disease can be controlled by eradicating either host in a given area or by timely application of a fungicide, in spring for junipers and in summer for apples. Cedar-quince rust, caused by G. clavipes, and cedar-hawthorn rust, due to G. globosum, are similar diseases that infect junipers and various members of the rose family.

Infection in eastern red cedars and other junipers is marked by the presence of greenish-brown to chocolate-brown galls, known as cedar apples, on the twigs and young branches. The galls are round to kidney-shaped, are up to 5 cm (2 inches) in diameter, and are covered with jellylike yellow to orange-brown spore horns in rainy spring weather. A single gall may produce several billion spores, which are carried by the wind to infect apples and crabapples. Pale yellow to orange-yellow spots with sticky centres and minute black pycnia (fruiting bodies) form on the young leaves and fruit. Orange tubelike structures known as aecia later develop on the undersides of leaves and on fruits, which drop early. In late summer, the aeciospores of those structures are carried by the wind to junipers; the resulting galls do not produce spores until the second spring.