Rhodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 2 January, 1900 No. 13 
THE DWARF MISTLETOE IN NEW ENGLAND. 
Arceuthobium pusilliðn, Peck, the dwarf mistletoe, is without doubt 
one of the most interesting plants in our New England flora. Asa 
flowering parasite it is, we believe, unique for this region in germinating 
directly upon the host-plant. Its parasitism is therefore unusually con- 
tinuous and undoubtedly of long standing, — a fact shown both by the 
absence of green coloring-matter and by the extreme reduction of the 
leaves, which appear only as scale-like rudiments. It is probable that 
the dwarf size is also a characteristic acquired after the development 
of the parasitic habit, since as parasitism advances the stem as well as 
the leaf ceases to have its usual physiological significance and, except 
in cases like the dodder where the stem functions as a running root- 
stock, it is apt to decrease in length and even disappear altogether as 
in parasites like Apodanthes or Rafflesia, in which the flowers are 
essentially sessile upon the host-plant. Arceuthobium pusillum is also 
interesting from the fact that it is in the northeastern United States 
an outlying representative of the large and chiefly tropical family of 
the ZLoranthaceae, to which belong also the true mistletoe of Europe, 
Viscum album, L., and the false or American mistletoe, Phoradendron 
flavescens, Nutt. The latter plant occurs from New Jersey to Ohio, 
Missouri, and southward. The tropical members of the family, of 
which there are more than five hundred species, exhibit by their yellow- 
green and olive-brown color all stages in the degeneration of their 
assimilative tissue. Some of them have, however, unlike our northern 
. species, rather large and showy flowers. 
Through the kind co-operation of Messrs. von Schrenk, Jack, Jones, 
Eggleston, and Fernald, who have made independently a number of 
almost simultaneous discoveries relative to the dwarf mistletoe, it is 
possible to present at one time the following papers which greatly 
