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They seek it here, they seek it there...
In Whitby, Michael Hickes has discovered where elusive mistletoe is growing, but he's not saying where.
IF you ask people where they think mistletoe is grown, you will get a variety of responses: abroad, down south, on apple trees? Not round here. And so on.
With the mistletoe season here, I made a brief survey, and those were some of the answers I received, though I must add, however, that one or two of the younger survey-subjects seemed just a little surprised that it grew anywhere at all, such is the subtle spread of artificial "fir-trees", packeted "snow", switch-on "icicles" strung from guttering, and of course plastic "holly" and "mistletoe".
To some extent, of course, each of those answers was right. The question was put to 20 people of ages ranging from about 10 to about three-score-years-and-ten. There was no significant difference according to age.
France and/or Spain (even Turkey) were mentioned, and another response (with an added tone of cynicism – I wonder why) was "the EU, I suppose", which could be taken to cover a multitude of doubtful and unlikely places, though only one person's reply was "China?"
Viscum album – European Mistletoe or Common Mistletoe – does indeed grow in mainland Europe, and we do import quite a proportion of what we use.
Apple is about twice as likely to be the host tree as its nearest rival, the lime; there are many other hosts – plum, willow, hawthorn and so on.
"Down south"? Yes, that's undoubtedly true from a Yorkshire viewpoint. A glance at a scatter-map of recorded sites in 1990 produced by Jonathan Briggs of Mistletoe Matters, Stonehouse in Gloucestershire, shows that Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Somersetshire and Worcestershire are way ahead of any other county mistletoe-wise.
These might be called the "orchard counties", and the great preponderance of the apple tree there makes that area of England a utopia for this hemi-parasite. The much more frequently used term "parasite" is in fact inaccurate.
The photosynthetic process involved in the plant's growth uses light energy absorbed by chlorophyll – ie it has green leaves, and thus viscum album is not a true parasite such as a fungus growing on a tree-trunk would be.
Apparently in some places, the best mistletoe, the most inaccessible of all, near the top of the tallest lime trees – has to be shot down. The assertion that mistletoe does not grow "around here" ("here" being the Whitby area), is not completely true. It is, however, quite unusual to find it so far north, so near the coast – and on a rowan (mountain ash) tree.
The local example I have spotted – see the photograph – is a healthy growth, having reached about four feet in diameter in seven or eight years, and is still expanding. That, unfortunately, may be its downfall eventually, in both senses of the word, for in a gale the main supporting branch could so easily snap.
If it does, let's hope it occurs just before Christmas, so that the householder might make a bit of unexpected profit from his front garden – I cannot see any market for mistletoe after Twelfth Night at the latest.
Mistletoe isn't easily encouraged to grow, unless, I suppose, you live in the "orchard counties". I have tried to start growths by lodging some of the sticky berries into crevices in the bark of apple trees, but with no luck.
By far the most successful starter of mistletoe growth is the mistlethrush, named for its choice of this favourite food, and perhaps because it is one of the few species which can readily recognise white berries, rather than orange, red or black, as a good meal. This thrush spreads the seeds by defecating strings of the still-viscous seeds which may or indeed may not hit a branch then, hey presto, a new plant.
The other bird that is significant in spreading mistletoe is the blackcap, though rather differently and more efficiently by wiping the sticky seed from its beak along a branch before consuming the rest of
the fruit.
A survey in the 1970s of mistletoe-producing counties named the four listed above, adding that occurrences in the North and the East of England were rare. Three decades on, the situation is basically the same, so how lucky we are to have a specimen here.
Production may yet take off, as it were, and with global warming's aid perhaps, future generations may be visiting Whitby to buy organically-produced locally-grown mistletoe, always supposing, of course, that the interest in cloning-of-humans experimentation doesn't spoil all the fun that the kissing under the mistletoe tradition might lead to. Surely life won't become that joyless, will it?
Mistletoe does, after all, have certain properties medically proved to be beneficial to mankind. It is sometimes used when a person's immunity system is compromised, as in ME, Candida albicans, and HIV, and as part of the treatment for certain types of cancer.
In earlier centuries (apart from its involvement in both pagan and Christian festivities) mistletoe had a place in time-honoured remedies for convulsions, nervous debility, nosebleeds, aching muscles, cramp, migraine, and even in that now "fashionable" ailment – stress-related disorder.
Just as well, then, that mistletoe's getting a foothold at Whitby.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Friday 25 May 2012
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