Nancy Snyder, aged 9 , o f Williamsport, .PA for her question

Does mistletoe grow on trees?

At Christmas time, many people hang a twig of mistletoe high above the floor. Anyone caught under the mistletoe bough gets a kiss, This is an old, old custom. The pale green plant with glossy white berries seems to have fascinated peoples for countless generations. Many old legends are told about it.

There is an old superstition in the custom of our mistletoe Christmas decoration. It should., says 'the cue' tom, be placed where it does not touch the ground. Perhaps this is because growing mistletoe lives high above the ground It grows from the trunks, elbows and arms of woody trees,

And it prefers certain trees. It grows well in apple trees, maples, willows, poplars and mountain ash, In winter, these trees lose thier leaves, and mistletoe shows up in leafy' green`balin among the bare branches. It also grows in evergreens and sometimes in oaks.

The waxy lite berries ripen from little yellow blossoms after the first snow. Birds come along to eat them. The seeds in the berries are scattered from bird droppings. In Europe, there is a bird called the missel, or mistletoe, thrush. He dines on the white berries and wipes his beak clean on a branch. Often he plants a seed as he cleans his beak after dinner, The seed hopes to get stuck in a crack of tree bark. Then it sends down a sucker root into the wood. This root is called a haustoria. It can syphon up water and salts from the living tree, But it does not steal the treats sugar food. It does not need to do so,

Mistletoe is slow growing. But its stems and leaves carry green chlorophyll. And green chlorophyll can make sugar, which is plant food. Mistletoe can make plant food from air, sunlight, water and chemicals. It gets air. arid sunshine from around its stems and green leaves. It needs‑to take only water and chemicals from its host, the tree,

The pretty plant, then, is not strictly a parasite. The water and chemicals it takes do not seem to harm the host tree. However, sometimes a tree gets swamped with more than its share of leafy mistletoe plants, The branches of such trees seem to be made of mistletoe. The tree's own leaves are shut off from the necessary air and sunlight. In time, such an overgrowth of mistletoe could destroy a great tree,