Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/376

This page has been validated.
346
REMARKABLE EXCRESCENCES.

moss-like balls, in whose internal parts numerous maggots are always to be found, till they become the winged Cynips Rosæ, and eat their way out. Many of our Willows bear round excrescences, as large as peas, on their leaves; but I remember to have been very much astonished in Provence with a fine branched production on the Willows in winter, which appeared like a tufted Lichen, but proved on examination a real Gall. Indeed our Salix Helix, t. 1343, is called Rose Willow from its bearing no less remarkable an excrescence, like a rose, at the ends of some of its branches, in consequence of the puncture of an insect, and these are in like manner durable though the proper leaves fall. The Mastic-tree, Pistacia Lentiscus, is often laden, in the south of Europe, with large red hollow finger-like bodies, swarming internally with small insects, the Aphis Pistaciæ of Linnæus. The young shoots of Salvia pomifera, Fl. Græc. t.&mbsp;15, S. triloba, t. 17, and even S. officinalis, in consequence of the attacks probably of some Cynips, swell into large juicy balls, very like apples, and even crowned with rudiments of leaves resembling