Lots of news reports over the weekend about the ‘bumper crop’ of mistletoe we’ve got this season, many quoting me as saying how good the berry crop is, and how this’ll keep the prices down – which is good for a ‘credit crunch Christmas’.
All this sounds very good but I think I must highlight two caveats:
- Firstly the expected low prices (to be confirmed, or not, at the first mistletoe auction of 2008 tomorrow) largely apply to wholesale mistletoe.
This may be easily passed on to the retail mistletoe market if you’re buying plain sprigs sold at the greengrocers but…
…if you buy pre-packaged mistletoe from a florist, or online, bear in mind the main costs for those are preparation, handling and shipping. These processing costs are the same or higher this season – so that mistletoe will be much the same prices as last year. Sorry!
- Secondly I did qualify my comments on the berry glut slightly, pointing out that although there were lots of berries, the foliage is looking a bit reduced and scraggy and the sprigs are not quite as good-looking as you’d think, even with all those berries… (This snippet was omitted from the reported story in the papers.) So the market may differentiate between good-leaved and bad-leaved mistletoe this season, instead of good v poor berries. We shall see…
But there are lot of berries… Definitely another mistletoe bling year…
Cutting below is from today’s Telegraph – that’s Reg Farmer in the red hat.
