SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
129 
its praises many a long year under names it still 
bears in part—Holme and Hulver (Hulwun tre). 
The common holly, the only plant known to 
Shakespeare, is the Ilex aquifolium of Linnaeus 
our only British species of the order llicacece , and is 
found wild throughout Europe, from Southern Nor¬ 
way to Turkey, and also in West Asia. Not the 
least of its beauties are the little cymes of waxy, 
white flowers which appear from May till August in 
the setting of green. 
Side by side with holly that most curious parasitic 
plant, the mistletoe (Viscum album, L.), has ever been 
placed, the position of high honour, held appar¬ 
ently from the very earliest times; but Shakespeare 
says nothing of all this. He entirely ignores the 
stolen salutation beneath its protective shadow. 
Neither does he tell us ought of its occult powers, in 
banishing evil spirits, nothing of its heathen use, as 
tradition has handed down of white-robed Druids 
with golden sickles, cutting the mystic plant from 
the sacred oak. He looks upon it as a “ baleful ” 
thing killing its host. 
The plant itself belongs to a genus containing 
almost one hundred species, chiefly natives of the 
tropics. Our plant is parasitical on many trees, but 
rarest on the oak ; it is a native of Europe and 
Northern Asia, and bears flowers in threes, small 
and green, the reverse of conspicuous in March or 
May ; and in this island is not found north of York¬ 
shire. 
There was always a mystery attached to this plant, 
as in the ancient world it was not supposed to grow 
from its seed. 
The mode of its propagation severely exercised 
the minds of the Elizabethan writers, who were 
ultimately divided into two camps—those who said it 
was due to the agency of birds, as indeed it is now 
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