THE MISTLETOE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9714, 9 January 1895, Page 6

THE MISTLETOE.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —I noticed in your paper an account of the French Government taking steps to destroy mistletoe. In my early days when wandering under the trees of the New Furess seeking beech nuts and acorns, I spied numerous clumps of mistletoe in the oaks which grow there, and I have often varied my diet by eating the berries that fell from the clumps, and later on I used to get the seeds of the mistletoe and press them into the cracks of the apple trees in the orchard and grew fine bunches. But it was only when I reached Natal, South Africa, that I found the mistletoe was a curse. There, in the far-famed valley of the Uncomanzi, close to the place where Mr. Cecil Rhodes started as a cotton grower, all the trees were covered with mistletoe much the same as our English, except that the berry is yellow, and gets almost red, and this is collected by the natives, who use it for bird lime. All kinds of birds like it, and as in eating, the seeds stick to the bill they wipe them on the boughs, and thus the plants are propagated. If it was only on bush trees it would nob matter, but I have known whole orchards of peaches destroyed, and if one plant is introduced into an orchard, in a year or two every tree is affected. This, no doubt, is the reason why the French are endeavouring to extirpate it; but I do not think it grows in France as in Natal.—l am, etc., Buona Vista, Lake. Edwin Harrow. January 6, 1895. P.S.—Has the mistletoe ever been grown in New Zealand?