Tenbury English Mistletoe Enterprise (TEME) have been getting a lot of orders already – some for delivery later, but some for early Christmas events and weddings – so the new harvest really has begun.

 

Here’s a pic of Stan Yapp, Mistletoe Man of Tenbury Wells, demonstrating his harvesting technique – climbing a ladder as far as you can go and using a hooked pole to pull the mistletoe down from above.  The UK species is somewhat brittle, so this technique works surprisingly well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

   

 

 

 

Going back a few years, here’s a young lady doing the same thing, though rather inappropriately dressed for ladder work, particularly as her young man is looking up her voluminous skirts from below.  How do I know?  Well there’s a corny poem that goes with this pic, and it concludes with the lines;

I’m poor Jack, down below, watching under

My sweet little Cherub aloft;

Should you fall – Heaven avert such a blunder!

Fall on me, you will find I am soft.

    

   

Told you it was corny.

 

Talking of mistletoe in poems, here’s a bit of another one, though this one is a bit more classy and by a Byron (no, not that one).  All These I Learnt by Robert Byron (1905-1941) is a poem listing the natural features, plant and animal, that he hopes his son will grow up to appreciate.  The plants are treated seasonally – here’s the mistletoe bit:

   

At Christmas he shall climb an old apple-tree for mistletoe, and know whom to kiss and how.

It’s not a bad poem, and if you follow this link you’ll get the Prince of Wales reading it to you!