Witches' brooms

Witches use brooms or besoms (brooms made of bundled twigs) to fly through the air at high speed. According to folk-lore, witches travel on their their brooms to their sabbats, sometimes carrying along demons or their familiars in the shapes of animals. They also ride their brooms out to sea in order to raise up storms. However, Isobel Gowdie, a famous Scottish witch of the 17th century, claimed that she used her broom in a quite different manner; instead of using it for traveling, she used it to deceive her husband. Before going to a sabbat, Isobel substituted her broom for herself in bed. She said that he never knew the difference!

I fear that the local witches must have held an over-night sabbat if this parking lot for brooms is anything to go by.

Before anyone is tempted to send for the Witchfinder General, let me confess that these bundles of twigs, although commonly known as witches' brooms, have nothing to do with witches. There are, in fact, deformities in a woody plant, typically a tree, where a dense mass of shoots grows from a single point, with the resulting structure resembling a broom or a bird's nest. The deformity can be caused by a variety of organisms, including fungi, insects, mistletoe, mites, nematodes, and viruses.