Ecosystem Notes #11 - Mistletoe

Social Leadership Daily - Day #835

I love how the mistletoe is visible at this time of year, these vibrant green bundles of growth on otherwise bare trees.

They are more parasitic than symbiotic, but unless the infestation is extreme, both tree and shrub seem to co-exist happily enough.

A gardener friend once helped me try to plant some mistletoe: we had to replicate the action of the birds, who pick up the sticky seeds and wipe their beaks on the branch, scraping an opening, and leaving the seed stuck up against it. So we scratched the branch and tried to get the seeds to stick.

Of course, his advice was incorrect, despite sounding plausible. In reality it takes the nascent mistletoe shrub up to a year for the roots to penetrate the bark, and attach the the host. Logically this makes more sense than tiny birds scratching their way in through the bark, but I still enjoyed the experience of tampering with nature.

I think my attraction to this parasitic shrub is the way that it forms patterns in the canopy, sometimes solitary sometimes like a village. It adds a layer of context to the forest, as well as a spontaneous breaking up of the chaotic tangle of winter branches.