CHARACTERS—HABIT Ч 
times are by Oliver, who determined the Mexican and Central American 
collections of Liebmann and Oersted ; by Eichler, who took note of extra- 
territorial forms when revising the Loranthaceae of Brazil; and by 
Urban, who rendered a similar service in connection with his study of 
the family as represented in the West Indies. 
ANALYSIS OF CHARACTERS 
A few contrasts may make evident some of the differences between 
species in this genus which may be accepted as characters in their tax- 
onomy. The partial or complete neglect of these characters, to the pref- 
erence of the more usually employed differences in shape of foliage, 
etc., explains the insufficiency of such earlier treatment as that of the 
elder de Candolle in his very clean-cut elaboration of Viscum in the 
Prodromus, in 1830, and accounts for the confusion of our own species 
by the usually very accurate and acute Engelmann; and their tacit or 
explicit recognition underlies the masterly work of Eichler and Urban 
in revisions respectively of Brazilian and West Indian forms. That 
these differences have been neglected so generally depends rather on 
their seeming insignificance than on difficulty in seeing them. 
CoLor.—How generally the color of normally vegetating mistletoes 
offers differential characters remains to be recorded. As is true of all 
of the species of the related genus Arceuthobium or Razoumofskya, a 
number of the species of Phoradendron that grow on conifers, e. g. P. 
juniperinum, P. densum, etc., are of an olive or brownish shade, the 
West Indian P. flavens gets its name from a very striking yellow color- 
ation, and some of the mistletoes that reach our market at Christmas 
time, e. g. P. macrophyllum, possess a very beautiful golden coloring, 
perhaps as the result of a partial etiolation after collection; but the 
prevailing eolor appears to be green, more or less dulled or shaded by a 
tinge of gray or olive. 
HaBrr.—No doubt personal familiarity in the field with the different 
species of Phoradendron will reveal several differences in aspect that 
cannot now be used in their characterization, for even limited acquaint- 
anee with them in nature shows that they are far from uniform in 
habit of growth. For the present, however, it ean be said only that in 
this respect most species of Phoradendron resemble the common Euro- 
pean Viscum in their bunched tufts, so that a winter picture of either 
may easily be mistaken for that of the other (Pl. 1). A marked exeep- 
tion is found in some of the desert mistletoes, like P. californicum and 
P. Libocedri (Pl. 2), which when seen from a distance sometimes suggest 
the cactus genus Rhipsalis in their long pendent tufts: and the Mexiean 
P. calyculatum and a few other species form wide-spreading fountain- 
like masses of still greater size. 
