MISTLETOE INJURY TO CONIFERS. Wi 
yellow pine and Douglas fir (fig. 15) and is the rule for larch. The 
stunting effect of these brooms on the trees as a whole was in one 
instance very interestingly shown by the fact that a middle-aged 
Douglas fir increased the radial dimensions of its annual rings after 
the removal by the wind of an immense broom located midway on 
the trunk. The weight of the brooms on some conifers is very often 
ereatly increased by the accumulation of dead needles, lichens, ete. 
(fig. 14). When loaded with snow or saturated with moisture the 
brooms are more 
easily broken off by 
high winds. The 
ground around the 
base of heavily in- 
fected larches is very 
frequently littered 
with brooms broken 
off in this manner, 
often insuring the 
death of the tree in 
case of ground fires. 
During the early 
part of October, 
1914, an unusually 
heavy fall of soft 
snow occurred locally 
over a small area 
around Missoula, 
Mont. The snow ac- 
cumulated in such 
quantities on the mis- 
tletoe brooms of the Fic. 15.—Fallen brooms split from the trunk of a Douglas 
fir and piled about the base of the tree—a serious fire: 
menace, 
larches and Douglas 
firs throughout the 
area that the ground around the more heavily infected trees was piled 
high with fallen brooms. 
The foliage of old and mature mistletoe brooms is usually not 
as long lived as that of normal branches of uninfected trees. This 
is not true in the case of young well-nourished brooms. It has 
been observed to any extent only in-old brooms which have begun 
to tax the food supply of the tree or the branch on which they are 
located. In the course of one year it was determined that 655 more 
needles fell from a small but mature broom on a Douglas fir than 
from a normal branch of a neighboring uninfected tree of the same 
species. The number of needles falling from the broom totaled 
24182°—Bull. 360—16——_3 
