Can mere mistletoe presence increase biodiversity on the ground below? That seems an odd concept but, actually, studies over several years on mistletoes in warmer countries, and particularly on Australian mistletoes, have shown this to be the case. The impacts are mainly to do with nutrient-enriched leaf litter under the infected host tree, which alter local vegetation on the ground and increase faunal diversity within that litter. It can be so significant that such mistletoes […]
berries , Biodiversity , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Gardening , germination , Mistletoe , Other parasites , Science
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Parasitic plants in spring, Part 2
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 […]
Biodiversity , Blogroll , Mistletoe , Other parasites
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Parasitic plants in spring, Part 1
A parasitic plants update, the first of two (maybe three!) parts. This Part 1 isn’t about mistletoe (see Part 2 for that). Because now is the season for spotting other plant parasites – the ones that parasitise host roots not, as mistletoe does, host branches. It is also, of course, the season for spotting mistletoe seeds germinating – and that’s what Part 2 will be about. For now though it is root parasites – starting […]
Blogroll , Current Affairs , Media , Mistletoe , Religion , social history
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Mistletoe nonsense 2023 #2: Sister Boniface just about gets away with it.
Following my last entry, about the wildly inaccurate account of mistletoe in Ideal Homes magazine this month, I now offer some light relief, as my second example of recent mistletoe inaccuracy is more humorous, and much less annoying!. It is the 2023 Christmas Special of TV’s Sister Boniface Mysteries broadcast a few days ago (and viewable on demand on UK TV Play in the UK). The plot, a light-hearted and undemanding whodunnit based, very very […]
berries , Biodiversity , birds , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Mistle Thrush , MistleGO , Mistletoe , Orchard , Science , social history , surveying mistletoe
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MistleGO! A new mistletoe survey launched!
A brand new mistletoe survey has just been launched by the Tree Council and Oxford University, as an app-based citizen science project to assess the state of mistletoe in Britain. Not just where is it, but what quantities exist. This is new, and exciting, as it will help determine what is happening with mistletoe here -it seems to be spreading more and faster, but we need a new study to assess this, and to create […]
berries , Biodiversity , birds , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Gardening , Mistletoe , Science
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Mistletoe seed and seedling monitoring
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 […]
berries , Biodiversity , Food and Drink , Media , Mistletoe , Orchard
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Mistletoe Management on BBC Countryfile
We got a good 6 minutes on mistletoe management in neglected orchards on BBC Countryfile’s Christmas programme this year. The location at Moreton Valence, very close to me in Gloucestershire, was a rather neglected apple orchard which has far too much mistletoe in it, the normal balance from regular management having been lost some years, possibly decades, ago. Countryfile’s Adam Henson, a Gloucestershire farmer himself, joined me and my Gloucestershire Orchard Trust colleague Tim Andrews […]
Biodiversity , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Media , Mistletoe , Science , social history , toxicity
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The Journal of Ecology has a new, and long-planned, mistletoe paper
There’s a new, multi-authored, mistletoe paper just published in Journal of Ecology, which has been years in the making! It’s part of the British Ecological Society’s long-running series ‘Biological Flora of the British Isles‘, in which every paper covers the biology and autecology of just one species. In this case mistletoe, Viscum album. You can read the promotional blog (How green is kissing under the mistletoe?) about it on the Journal website here, but don’t […]
Blogroll , Mistletoe , Orchard
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Wotta Lotta Mistletoe
Car included to give scale. That really is a lot of mistletoe! Some as big as the car. On poplars in Church Lane, Bentham, between Brockworth and Shurdingon on the A46 in Gloucestershire. It’s a location I’ve been to many times before, but this year those mistletoe growths really do look massive. And unsustainable – at least some will probably break off in winter storms. I was in the area today to look at the […]