Greens for Christmas Decorations 
Some Unfamiliar Ones of the Pacific Coast 
By william S. RICE 
W E have been accustomed to associate Christ¬ 
mas with holly and mistletoe from time 
immemorial, so that no Christmas seems 
like Christmas without them. Whatever else we have 
for decoration on this festal day, we must have holly, 
and it must have “ lots of berries ” too. Nothing else 
in the way of greenery has such bright, red berries set 
off by such glossy, dark, evergreen foliage. It also 
possesses the advantage of being inexpensive, and, 
furthermore, it keeps a long time without water, 
though it remains brighter if its stems are placed in 
water. It makes perfect wreaths and it is unexcelled 
for informal dec- 
orations on man¬ 
tels, chandeliers, 
walls and dinner 
tables; and no gift 
seems like a Christ¬ 
mas gift, unless a 
spray of holly is at¬ 
tached to it. 
In the forests of 
the Pacific slope 
grow several shrubs 
that take the place, 
largely, of American 
holly among the 
people of those 
States. Of course 
when nothing else 
will do but the real 
holly the nursery¬ 
man comes to the 
rescue with several varieties of English holly, among 
which is a very attractive variety with a pale yellow 
edge to the leaves. But to many Californians the 
native Christmas berry (toyon), also known as Cali¬ 
fornia holly, appeals more strongly because it is by far 
the most attractive, the showiest and the most popular 
of all greens employed during the holidays for deco¬ 
rative purposes. The Poinsettia, a tropical plant 
much cultivated in Eos Angeles and vicinity, is a close 
rival of the Christmas berry, but it has the disad¬ 
vantage of being a much higher priced plant than the 
former and an imported foreigner besides. 
Next to the holly in popularity is the time-honored 
parasitic plant, mistletoe. This plant grows so abun¬ 
dantly on various oaks, willows and locusts west of 
the Rocky Mountains that in some localities it is really 
a pest and succeeds, finally, in killing the trees upon 
which it fastens its suckers. One of the handsomest 
sprays that it has ever been my good fortune to 
see, so far as “lots of berries” is concerned, was 
gathered by a young friend who climbed to the top of 
a tall oak for it. She succeeded in breaking off the 
entire plant and brought it home in perfect condition. 
One of my illustrations shows a photograph of the 
spray with the berries their natural size. The mistle¬ 
toe is not particularly interesting without these pearly 
white berries that repose like clustered gems among 
their deep green settings. 
'Phese berries come in the winter season, when food 
is comparatively scarce and hence some of our birds 
eat them very freely. 
Now, when a robin 
eats a cherry he 
swallows simply 
the meat and flips 
the stone away. The 
seed of the mistletoe 
the bird cannot flip. 
It is sticky and holds 
to his bill. His 
only recourse is to 
wipe it off, and he 
does so, leaving it 
sticking to the 
branches of the tree 
on which he is sit¬ 
ting at the time. 
The seed sprouts 
after a time and, 
not finding earth— 
which, indeed, its 
ancestral habit has made ic cease wanting—it sinks 
its roots into the bark of the tree and hunts there 
for the pipes that carry the sap. 
Now, the sap in the bark is the very richest in the 
tree—far richer than that in the wood—and the mis¬ 
tletoe gets from its host the very choicest kind of food. 
With a strange foresight it does not throw its leaves 
away, as do most parasites, but keeps them to use in 
winter, when the tree is leafless. 
There is no danger of exterminating the mistletoe 
for, should all its branches be snapped off, the roots 
are still there and cannot be killed unless the branch 
of the tree is actually sawed off. A cross section of a 
tree branch about four or six inches in diameter, 
sawed off at the base of a mistletoe plant, is a great 
curiosity of nature to the novice. The roots 
of the former plant can be seen honeycombing 
the wood of the tree in all directions and they are 
A CLUSTER OF MADRONA BERRIES 
