Mistletoe: "The Hemiparasite Season"

Some 1300 species of mistletoe -- a plant long used to mark the solstice holiday -- defy many of the conventional ideas surrounding them.

"BERLIN — Mistletoe. The word conjures winter holidays, office parties, stolen kisses, romance. But appreciation of the plant is no modern thing. Kissing under the mistletoe has been happening for at least 200 years. And some 2,000 years ago, the druids in what is now Britain venerated the plant when it grew on an oak. When they found it, they dressed in white, harvested it with a golden sickle, and sacrificed two white bulls. Or so says that great Roman, Pliny the Elder, in his “Natural History.” The druids — Pliny continues — believed that mistletoe could make barren animals fecund, and that it was an antidote to all poisons.

In the spirit of the season, I thought I’d investigate the plant for myself. So I bought a sprig from the florist down the street. I would’ve liked to pick it personally — I can see great balls of it hanging in the trees. But because mistletoes are spread by birds, they tend to be on thin branches way up high, out of easy reach of a wingless creature like me.

My sprig is from the plant the Romans called viscum: the common European mistletoe. But there are many other species — more than 1,300 in all. Despite the associations with winter, many of them grow in the tropics. There are even mistletoes that grow on mangrove trees. For that’s the point: all mistletoes are parasites, and grow on other plants, stealing water, minerals and other nutrients from their hosts. Some mistletoes even grow on other mistletoes. (To a botanist, “mistletoe” refers to a way of life rather than to one particular family of plants. It’s a habit that’s evolved independently several times.)"

Olivia Judson reports for the New York Times opinion pages December 23, 2014.