There’s a new, multi-authored, mistletoe paper just published in Journal of Ecology, which has been years in the making! It’s part of the British Ecological Society’s long-running series ‘Biological Flora of the British Isles‘, in which every paper covers the biology and autecology of just one species. In this case mistletoe, Viscum album. You can read the promotional blog (How green is kissing under the mistletoe?) about it on the Journal website here, but don’t […]
Blogroll , Current Affairs , medicine , Science , toxicity
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Mistletoe and Markov
How poisonous is mistletoe? Every Christmas season this question is asked, and every season the accurate answer (most media doesn’t worry about that) is, “it depends…” It depends on which mistletoe you mean. In Britain and Europe the mistletoe used at Christmas is Viscum album which certainly contains some toxins – of which more in a moment. In the US the mistletoe used at Christmas will be a species of Phoradendron, which also contains some […]