ALSO called Traveller's Joy and with the scientific name of Clematis Vitalba, Old Man's Beard is a plant better known to the gardener than to the East Lancashire naturalist.

This shrubby climber occurs in woods and hedgerows in chalk and limestone areas of Southern England. It is very rare in Northern England but it does occur in the Silverdale area which is where I found a few plants in its autumnal pale tresses of seeds and looking very much like an old man's beard.

It has been known to grow creeping along the ground but I found it festooned around a hawthorn tree which still had some withered fruits hanging from it.

The flowering period is said to be from July to September but those plants which do grow here in the North can bloom well into October. This is why I found the seeds hanging on (literally) in mid November.

FOLKLORE: The name 'Old Man' is said to refer to 'Old Nick' or the Devil. In parts of Southern England, clematis can grow in such profusion that it can strangle the life out of valuable fruit trees. Here then is not so much a kindly old man's beard as a devil's disaster.

Hence other names are applied to the plant such as Devil's Twister or Devil's Guts but I prefer the more pleasant name of 'Snow In The Harvest.'

Mistletoe's rude history

EVERY Christmas mistletoe appears for sale but far too few people realise what a fascinating plant it is.

Mistletoe is described as a semi-parasite. It is green in colour and can therefore make most of its own food but needs to absorb some chemicals from the tree on which it lives. It grows in bunches and its tangle of leaves looks like a huge bird's nest. It obviously never roots in the soil but has root-like structures which penetrates the bark of the tree and then extracts water and essential chemicals. It does not, however, do enough damage to kill the host tree.

There are male and female flowers on different plants. Both male and female flowers are green and inconspicuous but they are pollinated by insects. The female flowers eventually produce white juicy berries which we should not eat. Birds, especially mistle thrushes eat them. The sticky seeds get stuck to the bird's bill and it tends to wipe the seeds off onto the fork of a tree branch. This is how the mistletoe is spread.

There are three races of mistletoe but none is common in our area. Two are very, very rare in Britain and grow on conifer trees. The British species grows mainly on apple and poplar trees. Mistletoe is common in South West England and it is from this region that we get our stocks.

In Somerset and Herefordshire mistletoe grows on the apple trees from which cedar is produced. The apples are gathered in the autumn and when all these have been picked the farmers can concentrate on selling their mistletoe.

Why do we have mistletoe at Christmas? The old Celtic priests (Druids) used mistletoe as a winter decoration around the shortest day (December 21) as a winter decoration. They also used it as part of a fertility ceremony. The early Christian church thought that this was a bit rude and they tried to ban the ceremony. This did not quite work because we still kiss under the mistletoe at Christmas! I guess that the old Celts were a bit more different to control!