Lots of mistletoe stories beginning to appear in the media now.
I’ll focus on just two stories today – firstly a feel-good story from the Ideal Home Exhibition at Earls Court, where they’ve been staging a Mistletoe Kissathon today. It’s not clear what they think that is, but it sounds good, and is apparently attempting to make a new World Record for the biggest ‘simultaneous kiss’.
They’ve wheeled out some celebs – Myleene Klass, Suzi Perry, Gino D’Acampo, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen and Olly Smith – to help out. There’s a picture gallery of some of them (see example left) , complete with mistletoe, at Craig Shepheard’s Demotix feed.
Second story today is less impressive – it’s the first (I’m guessing there’ll be more) of the idiotic berries and weather stories that appear each season, and which are usually demonstrably nonsense (don’t journalists ever ask questions?).
First past the ‘could-do-better’ post this season is Lucy Kinder of the Daily Telegraph, who has a front page story (pasted below) today stating, inter alia, that mistletoe has been damaged by the poor weather and romance will be limited. She seems to be blaming bitter winds and driving rain that kept bees in their hives and prevented pollination. Mistletoe flowers, of course, in February and March when, as far as I can recall, the weather wasn’t bad at all (rainfall in both months well below average, and sunshine and temperature were particularly good in March), so the bees were, probably, rather happy then and not hiding in their hives at all. Indeed mistletoe plants, on sunny Feb/March days, are often rather good for early bee-spotting. This is probably why there are lots of berries on the mistletoe this season – a fact that Lucy seems to have missed.
Is mistletoe definitely pollinated by bees? I’ve always wondered as I’ve never seen any on mine.
Yes, bees and other insects, including several species of (often rather small) fly. On a sunny day in Feb or March you should see insects on your mistletoe, and if near bee hives there can be quite a buzz under an apple tree with mistletoe. If no bees nearby you might just get the small flies – some of which are in the very small (gnat-sized) size bracket. These are best spotted by looking up through the mistletoe to contrast them against the sky.