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IV. The Mistletoe and the Golden Bough

Two species of mistletoe, the Viscum albumand the Loranthus europaeus. Common mistletoe (Viscum album).

That Virgil compares the Golden Bough to the mistletoe⁷⁷⁷ is certain and admitted on all hands. The only doubt that can arise is whether the plant to which he compares the mystic bough is the ordinary species of mistletoe (Viscum album) or the species known to botanists as Loranthus europaeus. The common mistletoe (Viscum album, L.) “lives as a semi-parasite (obtaining carbon from the air, but water, nitrogen, and mineral matter from the sap of its host) on many conifers and broadleaved trees, and chiefly on their branches. The hosts, or trees on which it lives, are, most frequently, the apple tree, both wild and cultivated varieties; next, the silver-fir; frequently, birches, poplars (except aspen), limes, willows, Scots pine, mountain-ash, and hawthorn; occasionally, robinia, maples, horse-chestnut, hornbeam, and aspen. It is very rarely found on oaks, but has been observed on pedunculate oak at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and elsewhere in Europe, also on Quercus coccinea, Moench., and Q. palustris, Moench. The alders, beech and spruce appear to be always free from mistletoe, and it very rarely attacks pear-trees. It is commoner in Southern Europe than in the North, and is extremely abundant where cider is made. In the N. – W. Himalayan districts, it is frequently found on apricot-trees, which are the commonest fruit-trees there. Its white berries are eaten by birds, chiefly by the missel-thrush (Turdus viscivorus, L.), and the seeds are either rubbed by the beak against branches of trees, or voided on to them; the seeds, owing to the viscous nature of the pulp surrounding them, then become attached to the branches.”⁷⁷⁸ The large smooth pale-green tufts of the parasite, clinging to the boughs of trees, are most conspicuous in winter, when they assume a yellowish hue.⁷⁷⁹ In Greece at the present time mistletoe grows most commonly on firs, especially at a considerable elevation (three thousand feet or more) above the level of the sea.⁷⁸⁰ Throughout Italy mistletoe now grows on fruit-trees, almond-trees, hawthorn, limes, willows, black poplars, and firs, but never, it is said, on oaks.⁷⁸¹ In England seven authentic cases of mistletoe growing on oaks are said to be reported.⁷⁸² In Gloucestershire mistletoe grows on the Badham Court oak, Sedbury Park, Chepstow, and on the Frampton-on-Severn oak.⁷⁸³ Branches of oak with mistletoe growing on them were exhibited to more than one learned society in France during the nineteenth century; one of the branches was cut in the forest of Jeugny.⁷⁸⁴ It is a popular French superstition that mandragora or “the hand of glory,” as it is called by the people, may be found by digging at the root of a mistletoe-bearing oak.⁷⁸⁵

Loranthus europaeus.

The species of mistletoe known as Loranthus europaeus resembles the ordinary mistletoe in general appearance, but its berries are bright yellow instead of white. “This species attacks chiefly oaks, Quercus cerris, L., Q. sessiliflora, Salisb., less frequently, Q. pedunculata, Ehrh., and Castanea vulgaris, Lam.; also lime. It is found throughout Southern Europe and as far north as Saxony, not in Britain. It grows chiefly on the branches of standards over coppice.” The injury which it inflicts on its hosts is even greater than that inflicted by the ordinary mistletoe; it often kills the branch on which it settles. The seeds are carried to the trees by birds, chiefly by the missel-thrush. In India many kinds of Loranthus grow on various species of forest trees, for example, on teak;⁷⁸⁶ one variety (Loranthus vestitus) grows on two species of oak, the Quercus dilatata, Lindl., and the Quercus incana, Roxb.⁷⁸⁷ A marked distinction between the two sorts of mistletoe is that whereas ordinary mistletoe (Viscum album) is evergreen, the Loranthus is deciduous.⁷⁸⁸ In Greece the Loranthus has been observed on many old chestnut-trees at Stheni, near Delphi.⁷⁸⁹ In Italy it grows chiefly on the various species of oaks and also on chestnut-trees. So familiar is it on oaks that it is known as “oak mistletoe” both in popular parlance (visco quercino) and in druggists' shops (viscum quernum). Bird-lime is made from it in Italy.⁷⁹⁰

Both sorts of mistletoe known to the ancients and designated by different words.

Both sorts of mistletoe were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, though the distinctive terms which they applied to each appear not to be quite certain. Theophrastus, and Pliny after him, seem to distinguish three sorts of mistletoe, to which Theophrastus gives the names of ixia, hyphear, and stelis respectively. He says that the hyphear and the stelis grow on firs and pines, and that the ixia grows on the oak (δρῦς), the terebinth, and many other kinds of trees. He also observes that both the ixia and the hyphear grow on the ilex or holm-oak (πρῖνος), the same tree sometimes bearing both species at the same time, the ixia on the north and the hyphear on the south. He expressly distinguishes the evergreen species of ixia from the deciduous, which seems to prove that he included both the ordinary mistletoe (Viscum album) and the Loranthus under the general name of ixia.⁷⁹¹

Doubts as to the identification of the ancient names for mistletoe.

Modern writers are not agreed as to the identification of the various species of mistletoe designated by the names ixia, hyphear, and stelis. F. Wimmer, the editor of Theophrastus in the Didot edition, takes hyphear to be common mistletoe (Viscum album), stelis to be Loranthus europaeus, and ixia to be a general name which includes the two species.⁷⁹² On the other hand F. Fraas, while he agrees as to the identification of hyphear and stelis with common mistletoe and Loranthus respectively, inclines somewhat hesitatingly to regard ixia or ixos (as Dioscorides has it) as a synonym for stelis (the Loranthus).⁷⁹³ H. O. Lenz, again, regards both hyphear and stelis as synonyms for common mistletoe (Viscum album), while he would restrict ixia to the Loranthus.⁷⁹⁴ But both these attempts to confine ixia to the single deciduous species Loranthus seem incompatible with the statement of Theophrastus, that ixia includes an evergreen as well as a deciduous species.⁷⁹⁵

Did Virgil compare the Golden Bough to common mistletoe or to Loranthus? Some enquirers decide in favour of Loranthus.

We have now to ask, Did Virgil compare the Golden Bough to the common mistletoe (Viscum album) or to the Loranthus europaeus? Some modern enquirers decide in favour of the Loranthus. Many years ago Sir Francis Darwin wrote to me:⁷⁹⁶ “I wonder whether Loranthus europaeus would do for your Golden Bough. It is a sort of mistletoe growing on oaks and chestnuts in S. Europe. In the autumn it produces what are described as bunches of pretty yellow berries. It is not evergreen like the mistletoe, but deciduous, and as its leaves appear at the same time as the oak leaves and drop at the same time in autumn, it must look like a branch of the oak, more especially as it has rough bark with lichens often growing on it. Loranthus is said to be a hundred years old sometimes.” Professor P. J. Veth, after quoting the passage from Virgil, writes that “almost all translators (including Vondel) and commentators of the Mantuan bard think that the mistletoe is here meant, probably for the simple reason that it was better known to them than Loranthus europaeus. I am convinced that Virgil can only have thought of the latter. On the other side of the Alps the Loranthus is much commoner than the mistletoe; on account of its splendid red blossoms, sometimes twenty centimetres long, it is a far larger and more conspicuous ornament of the trees; it bears really golden yellow fruit (Croceus fetus), whereas the berries of the mistletoe are almost white; and it attaches itself by preference to the oak, whereas the mistletoe is very seldom found on the oak.”⁷⁹⁷ Again, Mr. W. R. Paton writes to me from Mount Athos:⁷⁹⁸ “The oak is here called dendron, the tree. As for the mistletoe there are two varieties, both called axo (ancient ἰξός). Both are used to make bird-lime. The real Golden Bough is the variety with yellow berries and no leaves. It is the parasite of the oak and rarely grows on other trees. It is very abundant, and now in winter the oak-trees which have adopted it seem from a distance to be draped in a golden tissue. The other variety is our own mistletoe and is strictly a parasite of the fir (a spruce fir, I don't know its scientific name). It is also very abundant.”

Reason for preferring common mistletoe. Perhaps Virgil confused the two species.

Thus in favour of identifying Virgil's mistletoe (viscum) with Loranthus rather than with common mistletoe it has been urged, first, that the berries of Loranthus are bright yellow, whereas those of the mistletoe are of a greenish white; and, second, that the Loranthus commonly grows on oaks, whereas mistletoe seldom does so, indeed in Italy mistletoe is said never to be found on an oak. Both these circumstances certainly speak strongly in favour of Loranthus; since Virgil definitely describes the berries as of a saffron-yellow (croceus) and says that the plant grew on a holm-oak. Yet on the other hand Virgil tells us that the plant put forth fresh leaves in the depths of winter (brumali frigore, strictly speaking, “the cold of the winter solstice”); and this would best apply to the common mistletoe, which is evergreen, whereas Loranthus is deciduous.⁷⁹⁹ Accordingly, if we must decide between the two species, this single circumstance appears to incline the balance in favour of common mistletoe. But is it not possible that Virgil, whether consciously or unconsciously, confused the two plants and combined traits from both in his description? Both parasites are common in Italy and in appearance they are much alike except for the colour of the berries. As a loving observer of nature, Virgil was probably familiar by sight with both, but he may not have examined them closely; and he might be excused if he thought that the parasite which he saw growing, with its clusters of bright yellow berries, on oaks in winter, was identical with the similar parasite which he saw growing, with its bunches of greenish white berries and its pale green leaves, on many other trees of the forest. The confusion would be all the more natural if the Celts of northern Italy, in whose country the poet was born, resembled the modern Celts of Brittany in attaching bunches of the common mistletoe to their cottages and leaving them there till the revolving months had tinged the pale berries, leaves, and twigs with a golden yellow, thereby converting the branch of mistletoe into a true Golden Bough.