Not Just for Kissing: Mistletoe and Birds, Bees, and Other Beasts

American mistletoe fruit and flowers, Laurens County, Georgia. Photo courtesy of Alan Cressler, USGS.

Mistletoe can take many forms other than the American mistletoe with berries seen around the holidays. It provides essential food, cover and nesting sites for an amazing number of critters. In fact, some animals couldn’t even survive without mistletoe.

Mistletoe spreads by seeds — the seeds in some mistletoe explode from a fruit and disperse themselves. Many North American types of mistletoe are distributed by birds either in their feces or due to the stickiness of the berries and seeds. They also may be cleaned from bird beaks onto the branches of trees where they grow. Once mistletoe germinate and become established, they have material similar to a root for a ground-dwelling plant. This material moves under the bark and that is how the mistletoe gains energy as well as nutrients from its host tree.

Pruning out all branches with the mistletoe material as soon as the plant appears should control the mistletoe and prevent its spread. First cut close the mistletoe, then look at the branch structure and prune approximately one foot below where the mistletoe physically appears in order to rid the host tree of the mistletoe plant.