What is Mistletoe?

At Christmastime no home can be properly decorated for a holiday party without a sprig of mistletoe over a doorway. Everyone knows that the best way to get a holiday kiss is to stand under the mistletoe. If that doesn't work, wait until the party warms up a bit and try again.

Mistletoe, shrouded in mystery and legend, is a parasitic plant that lives on hardwood trees. In Texas, it likes hackberry, blue jack oak, and sweet gum trees. It doesn't grow well on smooth-barked trees like birch or sycamore. The roots of the mistletoe grow into the trees limbs and the mistletoe draws nutrients directly from the host plant. Mistletoe occasionally lives without a host and, and sometimes you may see mistletoe plants living on top of each other.

The berries can be white or red and the flowers can be almost any color. The birds love the berries and when they leave their droppings full of berries on a tree limb, the mistletoe takes root and begins to grow. There is another type of mistletoe, the hemlock dwarf mistletoe that grows on evergreens, that is able to shoot its seeds as far as 40 feet away from the host plant. It usually takes about five years for mistletoe plants to flower and produce berries.

Mistletan is the Old English word for mistletoe and is a combination of two words that mean "dung" and "twig." Originally, folks thought that mistletoe simply grew where birds landed, and didn't realize the birds were leaving the seeds behind.

The French came up with the idea that mistletoe was growing on the trees used to make the cross that was used to crucify Jesus so it was condemned to live a life as a parasite. Vikings, however, believed that mistletoe could raise folks from the dead. The Druids in Britain believed mistletoe could protect them from witchcraft, increase fertility, and heal diseases. They would cut the mistletoe off of oak trees five days after the new moon following the winter solstice. It would become contaminated if it touched the ground so they used a special white cloth to catch it. That is probably why we always hang it up, for example over the doorway.

The correct mistletoe etiquette is for the man to remove one berry when he kisses a woman. When all the berries are gone, there is no more kissing under the mistletoe, or another sprig must be hung. It is believed that an unmarried woman not kissed under the mistletoe will remain single for another year.

Mistletoe is easy to see because it usually is the only thing green on the deciduous trees in the landscape during the winter. It has bright green leathery leaves and grows directly out of a tree's branches. If you have some hanging around the house this holiday season, keep it away from children and pets. If ingested it will cause severe cramps and diarrhea and in some cases is fatal. But, it's great to know that even the lowliest parasite growing on our landscape was once considered an important and magical part of the ceremonies, like Christmas, that make our brief human experience fun an interesting. Visit www.biglump.com for more gardening topics and information.