268 
THE PLANT WORLD. 
recent visit to the Laboratory of the New York Botanical Garden 
at Cinchona, the writer brought back twelve species, all differing 
greatly from one another in respect to leaves, flowers, and fruit, 
the berries showing a great variety in color—white, yellow, green, 
scarlet, orange, and purple. 
It is apparent, then, that the members of the family Loranth- 
aceae are widely distributed all over the world; that they favor 
no one tree as host; that they flourish in divers climates—in the 
temperate countries of Europe and our own seaboard states, in 
Fig. 52. Oryctanthus occidentalis Urban. The rusty brown branches 
entwine the host branch, and send out haustoria which form knobs where 
host and parasite meet. The flowers are small, in spikes, sunk in ex¬ 
cavations of the rachis. The berries are dark purple, turning black. 
Jamaica, B. W. I. 
the colder climate of New England, in the dry air of the “ Ameri¬ 
can Desert,” and in the warm, moisture-laden atmosphere of Cali¬ 
fornia and the tropics; and that they grow, also, in many altitudes, 
from sea level to an elevation of 6,000 feet. 
Botanically, the mistletoe is a plant of unusual interest, and its 
curious mode of life, and the fact that it has a peculiar structure 
have been familiar to botanists for many years; but up to the 
