Note 112 — LETTERS TO MERRETT.
Reading edition
The Rev. E. N. Bloomfield has most kindly assisted me in attempting to identify the Parasitic products of the Oak mentioned above:
Viscum, is doubtless the Mistletoe.
Polypodium, the Common Polypody Fern.
Juli pilulæ: "little balls on the flower catkins." The Currant Gall, Neurosterus baccarum, which is the spring form of N. lenticularis; Oliv.
Gemmæ foraminatæ [formicatæ?] foliorum: "pimple-like buds on the leaves." Leaf-galls, such as the Silky Button, N. numismatis, Oliv., and the common Spangle, N. lenticularus, Oliv.
Excrementum fungosum verticibus scatens: "a spongy secretion bursting out from the ends of the shoots." The Oak Apple, Biorhiza terminalis, Fab.
Excrementum lanatum: the Woolly Gall, Andricus ramuli, L., a somewhat rare Gall, resembling a ball of cotton-wool.
Capitula squamosa jacææ æmula: "little scaley (or imbricated) heads resembling the heads of Jacea" (Black Knapweed). The Artichoke Gall. Andricus fecundatrix; Htg.
Nodi: probably swellings of any sort, whether caused by insects or not.
Melleus liquor: Honey-dew, a secretion of Aphides.
Tubera radicum vermibus scatentia: "swollen tubers on the roots containing grubs;" without doubt the Root-Gall, Andricus radicis, Fab. Polythalamous Galls, often very large at the roots or on the trunk near the ground.
Mosses, Lichens, and Fungi, all "genuine products of the Oak," need no comment, but Mr. Bloomfield remarks, "How wonderfully observant Sir Thomas Browne must have been thus to distinguish the various galls, &c., and to point them out so distinctly."
Browne's contemporary, Dean Wren, seems sadly to have misunderstood the fructification of the Oak. In a note on Browne's remarks on the "Miseltoe" (Pseudodoxia, book ii., chap. vi.), he says, "Arboreous excrescences of the Oak are soe many as may raise the greatest wonder. Besides the gall, which is his proper fruite, hee shootes out oakerns, i.e., ut nunc vocamus (acornes), and oakes apples, and polypodye, and moss; five several sorts of excrescences." See also letter to his son, Dr. Edward Browne, in which Sir Thomas Browne says that "wee haue little or none of viscus quercinus, or miselto of the oake, in this country; butt I beleeve they have in the woods and parks of Oxfordshyre."—Wilkin, i, p. 279.