Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club/Volume 2/11

BULLETIN
OF THE
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB.
Vol. 2. ]	New-York, November 1871.	[ No. 11.

43

72.  New Mistletoe. — About the 20th of September last we received from Miss L. A. Millington, Glens Falls, “a few specimens of a parasitic plant” that she had found growing on Abies nigra, Poir.  She wrote:

“I believe it to be a mistletoe.

  I found the first specimen on a small tree in the edge of a cold peat bog in

Warrensburg, Warren Co., N. Y.  In a few days I found more in a similar situation in Elizabethtown, Essex Co., N. Y.  Later I found it half way up the north side of a high mountain.  All these places would seem to indicate a higher latitude than even Northern New York as the possible habitat of the plant.  In every case the limbs of the trees infested were very much distorted.  Every twig bristled with the little parasite, and some trees seem to have died from the effects of its absorption of their sap.”

We suspected the object to be a gall, being partly misled by the separation of the joints in the letter enclosing them, but Miss Millington afterwards wrote us that

“nine of the plants were over an inch in height and were divided into sections of perhaps an eighth of an inch each.   The divisions were cylindrical, and each grew from the cleft end of the last segment.  Generally each plant had one, two, or more branches.  The cluster of fruit appeared in the same way from the cleft ends.”

We referred the plant to Dr. Torrey, and subsequently to Dr. Gray.   While awaiting their decision, we learn from Dr. Engelmann that it is a true Loranth.

This is what Dr. Engelmann says:

“Mr. Peck of Albany has made a most curious discovery, in finding on Abies nigra in your state a minute Arceuthobium, which is probably an undescribed species to be called A. minutum, but it has close analogies with the West Coast and Mexican A. campylopodium, Eng.   I am just reviewing this curious genus, with plenty of material at hand — a deal of labor.”