Mistletoe season is looming ever larger. Again. And despite it happening this time every year, I do feel it’s taken me a little by surprise this season. Lots still to do and to plan. Including reporting on current mistletoe matters here.
This season I’m planning to;
- re-launch the Mistletoe League project, making a clearer distinction between the management survey and the fruit varietal preference survey (if you don’t know what that’s all about, visit british.mistletoe.org.uk). More on this in November
- review the use of drones in mistletoe survey work (yes, really)
- discuss seedling survival – how long can a mistletoe seedling survive without connecting to the host?
- ponder on seed, and seedling survival without light – to stress that you must never keep your mistletoe seeds in the dark (‘cos if you do, they’ll die)
- re-visit a close encounter with parasitic plants when I was 14 – and realise, with hindsight, that the event has a lot to answer for
- list, and discuss, mistletoe and mistletoe-related events this season
- announce some mistletoe book news (I hope…)
- think on mistletoe imagery at Christmas – and current trends in mistletoe designs
And lots of other mistletoey stuff, as it arises. All of it, obviously, presented in the best possible taste (I’ll keep the references to the ‘sperm of the gods’ to a minimum).
That’s all for now – I’ll be back blogging properly from next week.
The English Mistletoe Shop is open again this season, though this year we are concentrating more on grow-kits rather than mistletoe itself. There’ll be more news on that soon.