MISTLETOES. 43 
VI—THE MISTLETOES 
AND ALLIED PLANTS. 
Recorps of the Mistletoes are extant from the remotest antiquity, 
the Oak-Mistletoe being of sacred renown since the time of the 
Druids, and it was in medicinal use also already by Dioscorides 
and Theophrastos. The English Mistletoe is the well-known 
Viscum album, whereas all the Victorian kinds belong to the 
genus Loranthus, of which the Mediterranean L. Europeus is the 
prototype. The generic name arose in allusion to the (straplike) 
narrowness of the petals. All species of the genus Loranthus 
are parasites and adhere to the branches of trees, on the sap of 
which largely their subsistence depends. If therefore the 
nutritive fluid of the infested branch becomes exhausted, it dies 
and with it the invader. Birds are much instrumental in carrying 
the seeds of Mistletoes from tree to tree, the sticky pulp of the 
berries, which furnishes birdslime, facilitating the adherence of 
the seed to the bark of the branch or stem, on which they 
vegetate. Remarkable are many instances of mimicry shown by 
our Mistletoes; thus the leaves of some resemble so much those 
of certain Eucalypts as to render the difference of the foliage not 
readily apparent from the distance, while the leaves of some 
Mistletoes on Casuarinas assume a stringlike form. Strange is 
also the discrepancy of the foliage of some Loranths, when 
erowing on very different plants; therefore the Mistletoes 
afford also excellent examples for the study of variability of 
species. The one chosen for illustration is Loranthus celastroides 
(Fig. XIX.), one of the most frequent of ours, and one of the 
most variable. When growing on Eucalypts it is narrow-leaved, 
when preying on Native Honeysuckles (Banksias) the leaves 
assume a broad form; it lives also on Casuarinas and several 
other kinds of trees, and readily becomes a troublesome intruder 
of gardens. The leaves stand always opposite, and alter in form 
from narrow-lanceolar to oval, seldom however on the same 
individual plant; they, like those of all other Mistletoes, are 
