Butterfly,

Rather than contradict my scholarly contribution about Diana with your admitted inexpert speculation, you may add those remarks to mine as an addendum. Folklife reflects a spiritual existemce between man and nature, and the early spiritual beliefs that were involved in worship of Diana are so far reaching Frazer's text only begins to describe it. Much of the Diana belief system (later called a "cult" by christians who wanted to downgrade Diana, as they wanted to downgrade many other powerful spiritual or godlike beings as they colonized the world) borrowed from various local beliefs, and from other earlier and/or adjacent beliefs, such as Attis and Cybel.

Human ability to survive and thrive certainly has to do with the ability to recognize the beneficial plants and animals over others. Trees with an obvious function are going to be more important, and perhaps more enspirited, than those that offer no succor. Autochthonous religions (based on a place and it's resources) grew and merged, taking their symbols with them. Some eventually became the hide-bound modern industrial religions, seemingly removed from nature, but with vestigial elements that are there for resourceful theologians to draw from if they wish to promote a more environmental view of the world through religion. Folk music and traditions are all tied in with this process coming and going.

Mistletoe has a primary parasitic involvement with many members of the oak family, and of oak relatives such as elm.

SRS