berries , birds , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Gardening , germination , Mistletoe , social history

Growing Your Own – advice and caveats

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

The English Mistletoe Shop, the retail website which I’ve jointly run for many years now, is not supplying mistletoe grow-kits this year. For me this will be the first winter in 20 years that I’ve not supplied these kits, originally developed for the (now defunct) Tenbury English Mistletoe Enterprise website, so it is a significant change of tack for me. I am missing the build up to it already, but other projects are looming and […]

berries , Biodiversity , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Gardening , germination , Mistletoe , Other parasites , Science

Parasitic plants in spring, Part 2

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

Picking up from my recent post about spring parasites that aren’t mistletoe, here are some pictures of what mistletoe seeds do in spring. And that is, mostly, germinating. On any old surface.  As the seeds won’t know, until the seedling tries to attach itself to a host, whether it is sitting on a host or not.  Interestingly, for these few weeks of germination, the mistletoe plant is independent, not parasitic, and relies on the resources […]