Dixie Brown, age 13, of San Diego, Calif. for her question:

The myths and superstitions surrounding the mistletoe date back to pro‑Christian days. To us it is no longer sacred, but the waxy little plant still whispers a hint or two of its ancient magic. It is hard. to give a fact about the mistletoe without adding one of the old‑time rumors about it. For example, it is a fact that the bushy little plant grows, not in the soil, but high in the branches of a tree. An old superstition. of the Celts said that bad luck would follow if the mistletoe were allowed to touch the ground.

The mistletoe played a dramatic‑ role ‑among the Druids., the priests o‑f‑‑‑‑‑­the ancient Celts, who governed western Europe before the conquests of Julius Caesar. The little plant r1so captured the imagination of the Norsemen. But its past glories have no place in modern science where, as a plant, it does not rate too high. For a mistletoe is a parasite, sapping its nourishment from a. host plant, unable to make a living for itself.

The bushy plant is an evergreen, one of about 20 different varieties. The one with the glamorous past is the common European mistletoe. The American mistletoe, very like the European variety in appearances is found in most states south of New Jersey, The host plant may b e a deciduous leaf‑shedding Free, or an evergreen. It thrives on the mountain ash the poplar, the willow and the maple. We find it also on the fir and the locust, the lime and the hawthorne, the apple and the oak.

You might mistake a tuft of mistletoe for a deserted bird’s nest, for it is always in a fork or on a branch high in the sunny air. It may be a small tuft of pastel green.

Its trigs may be four feet long and, in England, where its favorite tree is the apple, it often grows in trailing branches from the top of the tree to the ground. The thick, oval leaves grow in an unusual paired arrangement.

In late summer, small yellow blossoms appear on the mistletoe. By late fall, the flowers have turned to round little waxy white berries. Now the winter birds will enter the story. The white berries will feed them through the cold months and in return, the birds will help the mistletoe. Some birds swallow the berries whole, seeds and all. The seeds are dropped later as waste, maybe high in some friendly tree.

The missel thrush is an English songbird who was named for the mistletoe plant. He is thought to plant more than his share of the pale parasite. The white berries provide his favorite dessert. After dinner, he wipes his sharp beak on some rough bark to clean off the sticky pulp. Maybe a seed is also wiped off to grow a sucker root through the bark and so start a new mistletoe plant.