COUNTRY LIFE
WHEN we see accounts of shiploads of mistletoe coming over to this country we may well wonder why this strange plant is common, say common, in France and, in general, rare in Britain. In the poplar groves and along the poplar-lined roads of the Aisne district, the great dark lumps of mistletoe look like successive rookeries. We'have more birds to sow the berries, and our climate is as favourable and our trees (though not our poplars) more numerous. Perhaps our fruit-growers are a little afraid of it ; but how little harm it does even to an apple ! More of us, perhaps, might transfer some of our Christmas berries to our trees. It has many hosts. I have seen it even on a standard rose tree in a garden and on an oak beside a roadway, both in Herefordshire. It is, of course, traditionally associated with the oak and the
Druids, but in our degenerate days the oak is one of the rarer hosts; and the apple, it seems, preferred even before the black poplar. We
seem to nurse a preference for importing certain things. The maidens on which so many apples, especially cider apples, are grafted or budded have usually come—and in large numbers—from France, though a cider-maker has only to spread the rejected pulp on a field or bed to get all the maidens he needs.
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