ORCHARD TREES! TREE ENEMIES; MISTLETOE; CANKER. 
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Tree Enemies. —A Volume might be written on the many enemies that attack Apple and 
Pear trees in health and disease, but without much avail, since few of them admit of the ready 
application of a remedy. A brief notice must yet be given of those which most commonly and 
most persistently affect them : such as Mistletoe, Canker, Insects, Fungus, and other vegetable 
parasites. 
Mistletoe (Viscum album ).—The health and vigour of the trees in an Orchard will generally 
denote the attention given to them by the owner.; but neither care nor attention can altogether 
keep off the parasite, Mistletoe, from a Herefordshire Orchard. The thrushes and some other 
birds eat the Mistletoe berries. The seeds they contain pass through their bodies and are thus sown 
on the branches of neighbouring trees. The young seedlings send their roots into the tissues of the 
tree, and live at its expense for the future. There is a common impression among Orchardists that 
the Mistletoe renders the supporting tree more fruitful, and thus does but little injury. This idea 
is a very mistaken one ; the parasite may and often does throw the tree into bearing. The tree 
makes the effort with the knowledge as it were, that it is attacked by a vital enemy, which will never 
leave, until it has destroyed it branch by branch. The tree begins to shrivel and decay and the fruit 
becomes smaller year by year, albeit the tree may keep up the struggle for a human life-time. The 
“ baleful Mistletoe ” as Shakespeare truly terms it. 
Something may be done to help the trees. The Mistletoe should be attacked boldly, and all 
established plants be broken off or cut closely, year by year. If this is done before Christmas the 
berried branches will readily sell at any Railway Station at £4 the ton. The only effectual remedy 
however is to destroy the young seedlings. The silvery seeds are deposited by the birds on the 
branches, and the first rain washes them to the underside, where the glutinous matter causes them to 
adhere. Here the Tits and Finches happily eat many of them, but the careful quick eye of the 
Orchardist should see many others which his spud would remove at once. If the young Mistletoe 
seedling escapes these dangers it will send its root down the inner bark and throw out its first leaves 
the second or third year; nothing now can be done, but to remove the branch close to the trunk, 
or if the young Mistletoe itself is near the trunk, it is hopeless to attempt to destroy it, and the 
place of the Apple tree should be supplied by one of the supernumeraries from the nursery. 
Canker. —The terror of all Orchardists, and the bane of most Orchards, is always due to 
direct injury, but from whatever cause this injury may arise, weakness is at the bottom of the 
mischief. The tree is old ; or the variety very old, or very delicate; the soil is not sufficiently 
drained, or it is too poor ; or for some cause does not suit the variety ; in all these cases there is a 
want of vitality ; the young wood may be weak and not well ripened ; when a sudden frost, especially 
after rain,, ruptures the vessels of the bark and thus forms the chief cause of canker. Any direct injury, 
however, to the bark of the tree, as from the friction of one branch upon another, the pressure of a 
clothes-line tied from tree to tree, or injury from the ladder in fruit gathering, may all cause it, even 
in healthy trees. Canker commences with enlargement of the vessels of the bark—more apparent by 
the way in Apple than in Pear trees—and continues to increase until in the course of a year or 
two, the alburnum dies, the bark cracks, rises in large scales, and falls off leaving the trunk dead and 
