Yesterday I wrote briefly about mistletoe management, and the ongoing struggle to cope with too much mistletoe in the more neglected orchards of the south-west midlands. It’s an issue which I think is very important, giving rise to a short-lived abundance of mistletoe in some older orchards – which sounds good until you think about that ‘short-lived’ point – too much mistletoe will accelerate the death of the trees, and so accelerate loss of old orchards, and also lead to loss in quantity of mistletoe – within the next decade or so.
But it’s not often written up by journalists – too complicated for the short sound-bites the daily papers and TV news want, and not urgent enough for the countryside press. But this week it has been tackled by Smallholder magazine – in a nicely balanced article covering the Tenbury Festival and management issues. Written by Andrea Mynard, who blogs at www.shabbychick.me.uk
I spent much of yesterday in Leicestershire, where I was speaking (about mistletoe obv.) to a group in Market Harborough, which is not an area where mistletoe management is an issue – indeed mistletoe is relatively rare there (see map right). But as I pointed out to them, mistletoe distribution in the UK is changing, so it could be coming their way. I discuss this, in summary, in my recent feature in the December issue of The Garden, the RHS magazine, which is dropping through letterboxes of RHS members this week.
And, changing the subject entirely, Tenbury Mistletoe Festival have released a publicity shot of that mistletoe-themed ‘Sticky Kiss’ bread that I mentioned a couple of days ago. Here it is – looks rather good I think, though just a weeny bit marred, for me, by that awful plastic mistletoe they’ve used in the picture…
