Viscum album originally described by Linnaeus. Its species name is the Latin adjective "albus" "white". It and the other members of the genus "Viscum" were originally classified in the mistletoe family Viscaceae, but this family has since been sunk into the larger family Santalaceae. Several subspecies are commonly accepted. They differ in fruit colour, leaf shape and size, and most obviously in the host trees utilised. European mistletoe is potentially fatal, in a concentrated form, and people can become seriously ill from eating the berries. The toxic lectin viscumin has been isolated from "Viscum album". Viscumin is a cytotoxic protein (ribosome inactivating
Multilingual Multiscript Plant Name Database (Germplasm Resources Information Network), “References” as a: Porcher, M. H. et al. Searchable World Wide Web Multilingual Multiscript Plant Name Database (MMPND) (on-line resource). (Pl Names) The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) mentions:“Multilingual Multiscript Plant Name Database is searchable in any language and script and holds a lot of information including an index of medicinal plants”. Regarding the aims of MMPND, the following is said:“[...]the intention is to cover as many useful plants as possible. What is useful in one part of the world however can be a weed, even a noxious weed, in another. Our political stand is that,