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

Missouri Mistletoe looks European

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

Here’s a puzzler. Some background first – in the USA the native mistletoes are very different to our European Viscum album and, in multiple ways, inferior in appearance (branching, leaf shape, berry size etc) to ours. The species used at Christmas over there are mostly from the mistletoe genus Phoradendron, which do at least have evergreen leaves and white berries, they’re just not as good-looking!  (not to mention not being, actually, the genuine mistletoe of […]

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 […]

auctions , Biodiversity , Blogroll , Current Affairs , druids , Gardening , Media , Science , social history

Mistletoe Season 2024/25

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

A belated start to the diary this year!  A few snippets of info and dates for now, more soon: Dates This year’s Tenbury Mistletoe Festival (and National Mistletoe Day) will be on Saturday 7th December. Details still to be confirmed, for updates see https://www.tenburymistletoe.org/  One definite fixture is the druid mistletoe ceremony at 3.00pm on the Burgage.  This year’s Tenbury Mistletoe Auctions will be on Tuesday 26th November and Tuesday 3rd December at Burford House Garden Centre, Burford, Tenbury […]

berries , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Gardening , Mistletoe , social history , stupidity , toxicity

Mistletoe nonsense 2023 #1: Ideal Home far from ideal

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

Quite a lot of nonsense written about mistletoe again this season, I never cease to be amazed by how much mis-information there is out there. Though as Roy Vickery, a  plant-lore expert at the Natural History Museum once said in one of his books some years ago; ‘more nonsense has been written about mistletoe than any other plant’ so perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised. Much of it relates to toxicity, confused understanding of differing […]

auctions , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Mistletoe , social history , Tenbury Wells

Missing mistletoe at Tenbury Auctions

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

The first of the seasonal mistletoe auctions at Tenbury Wells was held on Tuesday this week (second one is next Tuesday, 28th Nov). It featured fewer mistletoe lots than I’ve ever seen at these auctions. I’ve been attending these annually for over 30 years, so it was a surprise, actually quite a shock. Many many holly lots, but very little mistletoe. It’s not completely clear why so little was there. One partial explanation may be […]

Blogroll , Current Affairs , druids , Food and Drink , Gardening , Mistletoe , Religion , Science , social history , toxicity

Locating Lindow Man

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

Whilst in Cheshire last weekend, on non-mistletoe business in Wilmslow, we took the opportunity to visit Lindow Moss, the peatbog where the bog body known as Lindow Man (and also, sometimes, as plain Pete Marsh) was discovered in 1984. The discovery of some mistletoe material in his gut, and some of the over-fanciful interpretations of that, has been discussed by me in the diary before – see 2009 and 2011 – and I thought it […]

Blogroll , Current Affairs , Mistletoe , Orchard

Return to Pentwyn, to see mistletoe plantings

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

A visit to the small orchard at Gwent Wildlife Trust’s  Pentwyn Farm Nature Reserve, in Gwent, almost but not quite in the Wye valley (and not to be confused with Radnorshire Wildlife Trust’s Pentwyn Farm Nature Reserve in Radnorshire). Way back in February 2011 I led a mistletoe workshop here, during which we planted mistletoe seeds, from ripe berries, on some of the trees – that’s nearly 13 years ago now, so I wanted to […]

berries , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Gardening , Media , Mistletoe , Science

Mistletoe germination

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

End of March – the end of the mistletoe season for us, but the middle of the germination season for mistletoe seeds. Why the end for us? Well we spend much of February and March each year working with mistletoe, especially in neglected sites, and supplying mistletoe seeds and advice to those who want them.  The arrival of April is often a welcome break as mistletoe has dominated our lives since October! But for mistletoe […]

berries , Biodiversity , birds , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Gardening , Mistletoe , Science

Mistletoe seed and seedling monitoring

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

A morning of mistletoe seed and seedling spotting around our garden – which already has (not surprisingly) multiple mistletoe plants, established over the last 20+ years.  There’s a mixture now of deliberate (man-made) and natural (bird-sown) plantings.  Many many more of the latter than you would normally expect as this garden has, when we used to trade mistletoe, been the storage space for much mistletoe cut from elsewhere, so has spawned many more new plants […]