Very busy with mistletoe stuff this season – I’ve got loads of things to blog about but am having a bit of difficulty finding the time… I usually post a summary of the wholesale mistletoe prices at the Tenbury Wells Auctions – so here, for the record, are this year’s figures, taken from Nick Champion’s reports: Tuesday 27th November 2018 Mistletoe 1st Quality to £3.00 per kg to average £1.75 Mistletoe 2nd Quality to £1.00 […]
Biodiversity , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Mistletoe , Science
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Bee-lieving in mistletoe berries
Mistletoe berries need bees – a fact that’s often overlooked when people talk about the ‘crop’. They interpret berry numbers as being a function of the recent summer or autumn weather, and barely give a thought to their real origin – from flowers that need to be pollinated. Flowers that open in February. And need to be pollinated by insects – bees especially. It’s the amount of pollination that determines the number of berries – […]
Blogroll , Current Affairs , Mistle Thrush , Mistletoe , Science
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The Kissing Tree – a mistletoe book for children
As part of the Tenbury Wells Mistletoe Festival 2018 a new children’s book, The Kissing Tree, has been published, written by local author Helen Wendy Cooper. It is part of the Tenbury Mistletoe Association’s promotions this season. The story centres on Jack the Jackdaw who is searching for the perfect tree for mistletoe to grow on – but is thwarted by a Robin that eats all his mistletoe berries. An imaginative and educational book for […]
Biodiversity , Blogroll , Current Affairs , Mistletoe , Orchard , Science
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Does the Mistletoe Weevil have its own parasite?
In previous years I’ve reported on the 6 mistletoe insects we have in Britain – and how we know very little about them. Indeed 2 of the 6 were only discovered here in the years since 2000 and the distribution and biology of all 6 are hardly known. But all are definitely tied to mistletoe, as they eat nothing else (except the Anthocoris bug, which eats the others). The six are: a moth Celypha woodiana (the […]