Muggles who fly in those contraptions known as aeroplanes can't fly much above 12000 to 13000 feet before they need oxygen Muggle passengers in planes flying above 15000 have to use it continuously or else fly in a pressurised cabin.Īn English witch therefore has a couple options. These twiggy masses, said Smith, are another example of “the intimacy of the relationships among different groups of organisms that have been living together for a very long time.Presumably a witch born & living in the UK would be accustomed to conditions within a couple thousand feet of sea level, and so would need some kind of supplemental oxygen at higher altitudes. Many trees live with them – sometimes dozens of them – for decades. Most witch’s brooms, however, don’t appear to weaken their host plant. “It’s definitely a no-joke disease and a driver of research on witch’s brooming.” A witch’s broom that affects lime trees, threatens the citrus industry in portions of the world. “It is a major threat to chocolate production in parts of the tropics,” said Smith. After the disease found its way to Brazil’s cocoa-producing Bahia State in the late 1990s, the country went from being second in the world in cocoa production to a net importer. It is expensive to control and can have a drastic effect on production. One witch’s broom disease caused by a fungus attacks the cocoa tree that produces chocolate. Some witch’s brooms have pernicious economic effects. In some cases a ruder tool is employed: a shotgun or a chain saw. It’s not a hobby for the fearful – or the acrophobic -– you have to climb the tree to harvest the broom. Since each is genetically unique, some horticulturists collect them in hopes of perpetuating the genetic disruption caused in the parent tree, to create a new cultivar. There’s also another plus to witch’s brooms. This specialized habitat is also used by some insects, Smith told me. The northern flying squirrel, as well as some birds, do use them for shelter. I called these growths “squirrel nests.” Not because I ever saw a squirrel in them, but because they looked like squirrels should nest in them. It’s said that witch’s brooms got their name because people thought witches had flown over the tree, or stopped to rest there. That’s because the organism that caused the growth in the first place (in this case, probably rust) has already spread throughout the bush. I cut them out, but they tend to grow back. In my garden I find them on my high bush blueberries, where they proliferate but don’t bear any fruit. Smith has seen them on butternut, black walnut, lilacs, hackberry, fir, serviceberry, and other species. Many species of trees and shrubs, both hardwoods and softwoods, are susceptible to brooming. There are many causes of witch’s brooms, including fungi, insects, mistletoe and dwarf mistletoe, tiny mites, viruses, and phytoplasmas – specialized bacteria that are parasites of both their transmitting organism and of the tree. The cytokinin causes shoots to proliferate wildly, producing a shrubby little tree within a tree. Smith explained that the infection stimulates the production of cytokinin, a plant hormone that interferes with auxin’s ability to regulate the number of shoots on the twig or branch. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Durham, New Hampshire. Witches brooms occur when an organism attacks the apical buds of a tree – the growing tips – causing a “disruption of the normal growth regulators, especially auxin, which turns off or slows down the growth of buds that are away from the tip,” said Kevin Smith, the supervisory plant physiologist at the U.S. Burls are produced when an organism invades the straw-like pathways in the phloem, or inner layer of bark. In a way, witch’s brooms are like burls, those swellings of the trunk of a tree that produce nicely figured wood. It’s a tightly-packed mass of shoots, a deformity caused by organisms that have invaded the tree, or a genetic mutation. This one grows on trees, or, more specifically, from the tree. The witch is the perennial favorite in Halloween costume popularity rankings, and she always carries a broom, generally a twiggy bundle with a handle that doesn’t look like it would do much for a floor.īut there’s another type of witch’s broom. No one knows exactly why witches were associated with with flying brooms. We’re talking, of course, about witch’s brooms. The Wicked Witch of the West zipped around on one in the Wizard of Oz. Harry Potter rode one during the Quidditch matches at Hogwarts.
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