Volume 8 
Number n 
The Plant World 
& iftaga^tne flf popular 3Sotanp 
NOVEMBER, 1905 
THE MISTLETOE: SOME RECENT OBSERVATIONS 
ON ITS HABIT AND STRUCTURE. 
With Illustrations by the Author. 
By Mary M. Brackett. 
During one season, at least, the Mistletoe holds its own among 
popular plants, and several thousand dollars are expended an¬ 
nually in supplying the demand for this interesting parasite. The 
white-berried twigs that we suspend from our chandeliers at 
Christmas-time are gathered from old apple trees in the farming 
districts of England. The plant is known to botanists as Viscum 
album, of the family Loranthaceae. Tradition has it that the 
Mistletoe is native to English oaks; but in reality it is distributed 
throughout Europe from the Mediterranean to the Scandinavian 
peninsula, and as stated in Kerner and Oliver’s Natural History 
of Plants, its favorite hosts are the black poplar and the pine, or, 
where these are wanting, the ash, elm, willow, walnut, or lime. 
But only by exception is it found upon the oak.* 
Although Viscum album is the one true “ Mistletoe,” the name 
is applied generally to the other members of this family, some of 
which closely resemble the imported variety, others differing 
widely. The number of species is about 500. Loranthus Euro- 
paeus, parasitic on oaks and chestnuts in the south of Europe, 
is a species with yellow berries. On the Mediterranean coast 
grows the Juniper-Mistletoe, Arceuthobium oxycedri, which has 
oblong blue berries, and its foliage leaves reduced to little scales. 
* Kerner and Oliver. Natural History of Plants, 1: p. 205, 1895. 
265 
