What happens under the Mistletoe, stays under the Mistletoe. Now let's get KISSING!
Learn More About Mistletoe
What's The Mistletoe Story?
Mistletoe is used for a variety of things, including but not limited to curing illness and disease.
What Mistletoe is most recognized for is KISSING under.
Do these things correlate?
Mistletoe is a plant that grows on range of trees including willow, apple and oak trees. The tradition of hanging it in the house goes back to the times of the ancient Druids. It is supposed to possess mystical powers which bring good luck to the household and wards off evil spirits.
It was also used as a sign of love & friendship in Norse mythology.
When the first Christians came to Western Europe, some tried to ban the use of Mistletoe as a decoration in Churches, because of some of the old stories about it, but many still continued to use it! York Minster Church in the UK used to hold a special Mistletoe Service in the winter, where wrong doers in the city of York could come and be pardoned!
#Facts About Mistletoe-
Mistletoe Is A Parasite
Mistletoe is an evergreen pest that attaches itself to trees, plants and shrubs, stealing their nutrients and water. This can weaken or disfigure the host plant, and eventually it will even kill it. Like most parasites, Mistletoe is really hard to get rid of!
Once it infects a tree, mistletoe is difficult to remove. When its seeds sprout, they grow through the bark of trees and into their tissues, extending up and down within the branches. Even if you cut off the visible portion of the invader, new plants often grow from inside the host. The most effective way to fight it is to remove an infected branch or limb entirely.
The technical parts of Mistletoe have much the same effect.
When a mistletoe embryo germinates, it first generates a small stem. An adhesive disc develops on it, with which it attaches itself to the tree bark. A suction tube (haustorium) now grows out of the middle of this adhesive disc, pushes through the tree bark into the germ layer (kambium) and forms a sinker from there. Now the mistletoe receives water, minerals and nutrients via the sinker, i.e. indirectly via the roots of the host tree. As the size of the tree trunk increases over the years, the sinker grows outwards with it and its base is covered by more and more layers of wood. As a result, the mistletoe is anchored deeper and deeper in the trunk without growing deeper itself. Around late summer, a mistletoe embryo that has germinated in April will have found a firm grip in the wood of the tree trunk with its sinker. Now the germ rests again until April of the following year. Only then does it begin to rise up and sprout two green leaves from the top. This is followed by another year's rest. Only four years after the first sprouting three new stems will grow from the middle of the first stem: two laterally and one in the middle, each with two leaves. From now on, new stems and leaves will appear every spring, but only in the axils of the previous year's stems. The central bud becomes the inflorescence.
Each of the white mistletoe berries contain 1-3 embryos from which the next generation of mistletoe plants will germinate.
Mistletoe is poisonous
Eating any part of the plant can cause drowsiness, blurred vision, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, weakness and seizures. The symptoms are caused by a poisonous ingredient called phoratoxin, which is found in all parts of the plant, including the berries, and is especially concentrated in the leaves. Eating the plant raw or drinking it in tea can cause poisoning. Notably this is the same reason that researchers are using it in a effort to cure things such as cancer and seizures headaches, infertility, hypertension and arthritis. It also has been proven Mistletoe can act as a tranquillizer and has been proved to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, help with whooping cough, gallbladder conditions and more. That is a mighty long list. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, mistletoe injections are available only in clinical trials in the U.S., but are available by prescription in Europe, where the plant is used as a treatment for cancer.
Mistletoe Has A Famous History!
European mistletoe played a large role in Greek mythology, and is believed to be The Golden Bough of Aeneas, ancestor of the Romans. The Norse god Baldr was killed with mistletoe. In Romanian traditions, mistletoe (vâsc in Romanian) is considered a source of good fortune. William Shakespeare mentions it in Titus Andronicus, Act II, Scene I: "Overcome with moss and baleful mistletoe".
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Types of Mistletoe Red Berries, White Berries & Variants
European mistletoe grows in temperate regions all over the world. There are also several species in America that thrive in the deserts in the Southwest, where they live on palo verde, mesquite, juniper, pine and other trees.
Mistletoe comes in different forms
Not all mistletoe has the festive holiday look most of us are used to. Some broadleaf mistletoes have green stems with oval-shaped leaves and small, sticky, whitish berries. Dwarf mistletoes' are smaller, with scaly yellow or orange leaves. Some have no leaves at all and some look like a dense bundle of twigs stuck in the branches of another tree.
Mistletoe is also known as birdlime, all-heal, golden bough, drudenfuss, iscador and devil's fuge.
he genus name of North America’s oak mistletoe—by far the most common species in the eastern United States—is Phoradendron, Greek for “tree thief.”
Mistletoes produce white berries, each containing one sticky seed that can attach to birds and mammals for a ride to new growing sites. The ripe white berries of dwarf mistletoe, native to the western United States and Canada, also can explode, ejecting seeds at an initial average speed of 60 miles per hour and scattering them as far as 50 feet.
When a mistletoe seed lands on a suitable host, it sends out roots that penetrate the tree and draw on its nutrients and water. Mistletoes also can produce energy through photosynthesis in their green leaves.
As they mature, mistletoes grow into thick, often rounded masses of branches and stems until they look like baskets, sometimes called “witches’ brooms,” which can reach 5-feet wide and weigh 50 pounds.
Three kinds of U.S. butterflies depend on mistletoe for survival: the great purple hairstreak, the thicket hairstreak and the Johnson’s hairstreak. These butterflies lay eggs on mistletoe, and their young eat the leaves. The adults of all three species feed on mistletoe nectar, as do some species of native bees.
The mistletoe’s white berries are toxic to humans but are favored during autumn and winter—when other foods are scarce—by mammals ranging from deer and elk to squirrels, chipmunks and porcupines. Many bird species, such as robins, chickadees, bluebirds, and mourning doves, also eat the berries.
In Asia, mistletoe has yellow to orange berries (Viscum coloratum). In Northern Europe, it grows only rarely because it cannot survive extreme frost below -20 °C. In the south, too much sunlight and drought limit its occurrence.
Mistletoe likes plenty of light so is not often found in a forest.
mistletoe is actually protected in the UK, the same as any other wild plant, and under the Wildlife and Countryside Act cannot be harvested for your winter decorations.
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Why do we KISS "Under The Mistletoe"
The custom of kissing under Mistletoe comes from England. The earliest recorded date mentioning kissing under the mistletoe is in 1784 in a musical. There was kissing under the mistletoe in the illustrations in the first book version of 'A Christmas Carol' published in 1843, and this might have helped to popularise kissing under the mistletoe. The original custom was that a berry was picked from the sprig of Mistletoe before the person could be kissed and when all the berries had gone, there could be no more kissing!
NO THANK YOU! #bringbackthekiss
Bad luck was said to befall any woman who refused.
I mean The name mistletoe comes from two Anglo Saxon words 'Mistel' (which means dung) and 'tan' (which means) twig or stick! So you could translate Mistletoe as 'poo on a stick'!!! Not exactly romantic is it!
However, this is the biggest way Mistletoe is spread. You see...
Mistletoe berries are incredibly sticky. When a bird lands on a tree the berries if not ingested can stick to the birds, either way causing it to spread to different hosts via the bird.
Another FUN FACT about Mistletoe Berries is that they are shooters. More on that later.
Mistletoe symbolizes love!
The Romans began the tradition of hanging Mistletoe on doorways, saying it symbolized peace, understanding and love, (and also as protection against witches and malevolent demons.) In the Western Christian world, Mistletoe has become a symbol of the winter holidays (which #Bringbackthekiss is fixing) and is supposed to hang in doorframes, under which passing people are supposed to kiss.
Mistletoe is evergreen.
That means it is NOT just a Christmas Decoration. XOXO
Mistletoe, a fertility symbol?
Since the Middle Ages this plant has been associated with fertility and life, as it is evergreen and survives on whilst other plants lose their leaves, and its white berries could be said to resemble semen. (Just the facts guys)
According to custom, the mistletoe must not touch the ground between its cutting and its removal as the last of Christmas greens at Candlemas; it may remain hanging through the year, often to preserve the house from lightning or fire, until it was replaced the following Christmas Eve.
The popularity of Mistletoe is celebrated.
Mistletoe is the county flower of Herefordshire in the UK, and each year Tenbury Wells, in Worcestershire, holds a festival dedicated to mistletoe during which a ‘Mistletoe Queen’ is crowned. A little closer to home, mistletoe has been chosen as the State Flower for the State of Oklahoma in the US.
Pucker up Y'all!
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