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Mistletoe
Last updated on Wednesday, January 01, 2003
While walking the road along the dry irrigation ditch behind my house one cold afternoon, I looked over at a row of tall, winter-bare Lombardy poplars. Their leafless branches stood out like bleached skeletons against the blue sky - except for a large, ball-shaped olive-green mass growing from one branch: a mistletoe.
Mistletoe, the plant made into Christmas "kissing balls," is one of the few truly parasitic flowering plants. Instead of producing its own food, mistletoe feeds on trees. When a sticky mistletoe seed sprouts on a tree branch, it sends a root into the tree's veins, and draws its food and water from the tree. Mistletoe grows into a dense mass of many-branched stems, well-described by its Navajo name, "basket on high." Eventually, however, a mistletoe may be doomed by its own success: dense mistletoe growth may kill its tree host.
Many different species of mistletoe grow in the Southwest, parasitizing deciduous and coniferous trees from the hot deserts to cool mountain forests. Different mistletoe species parasitize different tree species, and have evolved characteristics to fit each niche. Mistletoes that feed on desert trees, such as mesquite, ironwood, and paloverde have minuscule, scale-like leaves in order to conserve water. However, mistletoes growing in wetter places grow large leaves, like the mistletoe I spotted in the Lombardy poplars, which also grows in cottonwoods and ash trees. This mistletoe is widely used for Christmas decorations because of its large, pretty, oval, green leaves and glistening white berries. Green mistletoes like this one manufacture chlorophyll, and produce some of their own food. Yellowish or brownish mistletoes are completely parasitic, lacking chlorophyll altogether.
One of the completely parasitic mistletoes, juniper mistletoe, or bellota de sabina in northern New Mexico, is used in traditional medicine. Some curanderos prescribe it to staunch bleeding and induce abortions in sheep and goats. Navajos make a soothing lotion for insect bites and to cure warts by boiling equal amounts of the mistletoe and the juniper that it grows on.
The bright coral-pink berries of the mistletoe of mesquites and other desert trees constitute the major winter food of many birds; phainopeplas and robins, in particular, consume great quantities. (In fact, phainopeplas - black, robin-sized desert residents sporting striking crests - are so dependent on mistletoe berries that if the winter crop is scant, they do not breed the following spring.) Mistletoe, in turn, depends on avian consumers to spread its seeds. The sticky seeds pass through the bird's gut undigested, and are deposited in a pat of fertilizer - bird scat - on a branch, where they sprout.
The mistletoe I spotted in the Lombardy poplars nearby is the kind used for Christmas decorations. Perhaps I'll cut a few of its branches to make a kissing ball for my house. I don't know why mistletoe is associated with kissing, but I don't mind taking advantage of the tradition!
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