SOME NOTES ON THE DWARF MISTLETOE 



By Clifton D. Howe 



Until recently the known distribution of the dwarf mistletoe 

 [Razoumofskya pusilla (Peck) Kuntze] was confined to a few 

 stations, these being in New York, New Hampshire and Penn- 

 sylvania. These stations doubtless became known through the 

 interest immediately stimulated by the discovery of the plant at 

 Warrensburg, New York, in 1871, and by the subsequent de- 

 scription of it by Peck in 1873.* I n 1898 and 1899, the range 

 of this interesting parasite was extended by its discovery in 

 Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont. The most northern station 

 was Fort Kent, Aroostook County, Maine. An account of these 

 discoveries with descriptions and notes upon its habitat was pub- 

 lished in RJwdora for January, 1 900. 



Last summer, as a member of the New York Botanical Garden 

 Expedition to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, the writer found 

 Razoumof sky a pusilla at Pictou, Nova Scotia. The host was a 

 small black spruce (Picea Mariana B.S.P.), growing on the edge 

 of a pond in the woods about one mile from the sea. A month 

 later, August 10, 1 901, he discovered another station at Bay of 

 Islands on the western coast of Newfoundland. The trees af- 

 fected were in a sphagnous swamp on the top of a rocky hill 

 abruptly rising about 400 feet from the bay. As in the former 

 case, the host plant was the black spruce, but the parasite was 

 much more abundant. Twenty spruces bearing conspicuous 

 "witches' brooms" were counted on an area of less than a half 

 acre. The trees were small, stunted and sickly in appearance. 

 Some of them, apparently unable to endure the parasites, com- 

 bined with an inhospitable climate, had succumbed before attain- 

 ing their normal size. 



The locality is about thirty miles from the open ocean, being at 

 the head of the Bay of Islands near the mouth of the Humber 

 River. Thus the plant is to some extent protected from the ex- 

 treme exposure of the coast, while at the same time it has the 

 environment of abundant moisture which seems most favorable 



* Peck, C. H. Twenty-fifth Ann. Rep. on N. Y. State Mus. Nat. Hist. 69. 1873. 



