1900] Arthur, — New station for the dwarf mistletoe 221 
very carefully several clumps in order to investigate this, but in each 
case they separated readily into two distinct plants, the normal form 
being on one rootstock, and the variety on the other. 
My object in publishing this note is to show that there is every 
presumption in favor of believing that the form has persisted in 
maintaining its character for more than twenty-five years, long enough 
surely to justify recognizing it as a permanent variation from the 
normal character of the species. 
It is not so easy, however, to account for the variation, as there is 
absolutely nothing in the plant's environments to suggest an explana- 
tion, both forms being closely intermingled, and therefore exposed to 
precisely the same conditions; probably at least one half of the whole 
patch showing bifid and crested apices to the fronds and pinnae. 
MEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS. 
NEW STATION FOR THE DWARF MISTLETOE. 
]. C. ARTHUR. 
THE remarkable number of recent coincident finds of the dwarf 
mistletoe (Arceuthobium pusillum Peck) reported in the January 
RHODORA of this year, makes the discovery of another New England 
station in itself of small moment. It was my good fortune this past 
summer, however, to chance upon a more luxuriant and abundant de- 
velopment of the plants than any so far recorded. It was while 
spending some weeks at Isle au Haut, Maine, that I came one day 
upon a portion of forest along the shore, of a few acres in extent, 
composed almost entirely of white and black spruces in about equal 
proportion, which presented an exceedingly novel and almost fantas- 
tic appearance. ‘The general effect was that of an abandoned Italian 
garden, with its once compact and well clipped forms, now ragged 
and partly dead. Here and there witches’ brooms of characteristic 
form, from a foot to three feet in diameter, were prominent, but it 
was the transformation of whole trees from the smallest size to thirty 
or forty feet in height into solid individual ** brooms " that produced 
the strangest effect. Trees ten to fifteen feet high and of two-thirds 
. that diameter were most numerous, and were formed of a close growth 
of slender branches from the ground to the rounded summit, the usual 
pyramidal form being entirely lost. 
