Nature Notebook

Mistletoe in frost Zsuzsanna Bird

Mistletoe Kisses

There’s more to this festive plant than meets the eye…

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Worcestershire Wildlife Trust @WorcsWT t worcestershirewildlifetrust G worcswildlifetrust.co.uk w There have been myths around mistletoe for centuries and we’ve been kissing under it for at least 200 years but no-one really knows why or when we started doing so. Whilst the origins of these cultural tales are lost to us, it doesn’t stop this festive plant having its own natural stories to tell.

Along with our neighbours in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, we’re blessed with bundles of berries in our county’s trees. We even have our own myth that it’s parasitic when this is only partly true. The plant’s green leaves contain chlorophyll that, through photosynthesis, allows the plant to manufacture its own sugars from carbon dioxide and water. Mistletoe still needs minerals and water from the tree and it’s this that makes it partially reliant on its host (although it doesn’t appear to damage the tree that it grows in). Plants are either male or female and it’s only the female plants that produce the berries.

We all know that trees are great places for wildlife and mistletoe certainly adds variety into a tree, creating a hanging garden complete with sucking, burrowing and predatory invertebrates.

Who knew, for example, that there was such a thing as a mistletoe weevil? The larvae of these minute minibeasts, just 2-3mm long, live within mistletoe stems during spring and summer. Mistletoe marble moths are beautifully marked in creams and greys – just like marble except that they’re brilliant at camouflaging themselves as a bird dropping! Their caterpillars are so small that they feed between the upper and lower surface of the leaves, leaving brown ‘mines’ or tunnels as they go.

It’s not just small creatures that rely on mistletoe. Take a closer look as it hangs in the branches at this time of year and see if you can spot a mistle thrush guarding the berries. Relatives of our more familiar blackbirds, mistle thrushes are easily spotted as they defend their berry banquet with loud chacking calls, fighting off interlopers looking for a quick takeaway. Mistle thrushes, and the braver blackcaps who try to dodge their ire, are important for spreading mistletoe – they wipe their beaks on branches or digest and then deposit the seeds as sticky droppings onto other trees where the mistletoe seeks a way through the bark and into the tree to become established.

Lots of work has been done to plot the growth of mistletoe across Worcestershire but we’re now hoping to harness your help. We’d love to know if we’ve missed any locations and we’d also like to know what trees it’s growing in and where – are some trees more popular as hosts in some places than in others? If you’ve seen mistletoe growing and you’re able to take a picture of it, please let us know via a short form on our website www.worcswildlifetrust.co.uk/wildlife-sightings If you’re able to identify the tree that it’s growing in, even better! n

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