Mistletoe is a unwashed sight in home during Christmas and is part of our caroling tradition . It has even taken beginning in literature — the room that Scrooge enters to find the Spirit of Christmas Present is thickly hang with mistletoe . I ca n’t pretend that I do n’t see any reason why mistletoe would garner such fascination . First , it is an evergreen and therefore has the same grandness in the wintertime months ashollyandivy . There are custom and myth associated with Old World mistletoe in many cultures around the universe , but much disarray about how our current function of it get to be .
As a plant life eccentric , I ’d contend that the deed “ mistletoe ” is rather wispy , having been seize as a uncouth name to many private plant species . If we are interested in tracking down the original industrial plant in the European custom it isViscum record album . In North America , the mistletoe that we decorate our sign of the zodiac with and can witness growing in our trees isPhoradendron leucarpum . The common thread between the two is the current practice session of osculate under the mistletoe and the fascinating manner in which they grow .
Plant Freeloader Or Hospitable Host?
Mistletoeis a name to loosely describe several hundred plant life that have the habit of growing on another plant as a parasite . Mistletoe is unique in that it is only half parasite though . It can make its own intellectual nourishment from the Dominicus using photosynthesis , but it prefers to inhabit off the vigor of another plant .
Mistletoe starts life off as a very sticky seed . It postulate to be gluey so that it can seat on top of a tree arm and wait to germinate . The works begin life more as an epiphyte than anything else . The young leafage get their own food and but practice the branch as a resting place . As before long as its roots penetrate the KO’d layer of the horde plant , it becomes a lazy freeloader and point supporting itself . In some cases , mistletoe can grow to be so massive that it literally sucks the host plant ironical and kills it .
If you ’re like me , ripe about now you may be questioning why we utilize a parasitic works that kills its host as a festal symbolization of sexual love and fertility ! What in the world sort of message does that send?!Siaron James / Flickr
Mistletoe is much more than a sponge . The fascinating ways that the plant works with and depends on the animate being creation set about with the fact that the seed is so very sticky . In getting the fruit , skirt tend to get the seed adhere to their bank bill and must wipe it off on the branch where they ’re sitting .
The outlook of die trees may cast mistletoe as a baddie and in fact , there are some areas that classify the works as an invasive . The true statement seems to be somewhere in the middle . It is possible to remove a false mistletoe invasion by pruning the tree where the Loranthus europaeus has begun to uprise , though there is some grounds that where mistletoe produce an growth in wildlife populations and pollinators . Mistletoe provides food and shelter to a farsighted list of animals , so maybe you ’ll desire to retrieve doubly before removing it from your trees .
When I see mistletoe this time of year I ’m going to remember the phrase , “ It ’s complicated . ” In some case , Loranthus europaeus can be so qualified that it kills its partner with its deprivation . In most font , I cerebrate it take in its repute as an agent of fertility . Perhaps we need to look at the picture from a new perspective . Up close , we see one plant feed on another , but with a wider genus Lens , we see that Loranthus europaeus feeds on the aliment and vigor of its innkeeper tree and in return it brings a greater diversity in the community of interests around it . Mistletoe attracts friends , caller , pollinators and the busy action of many feet . As it hangs in our homes , it does the very same matter !
Rachel Andrew/Flickr
Siaron James/Flickr
