On mistletoe.

I sure do love Thanksgiving! I love the food, the family, the ushering in of the holiday season! For the past two decades or so worth of Thanksgivings, we have driven down to visit my beloved Aunt who lives in the DC Metro area in Virginia. One of my favorite things about this trek down I-95 is spotting mistletoe in the trees that line the highway.  

In addition to the mistletoe, and depending on the weather trends, the drive can be colorful, or it can be grey and bare, but it’s always delightful. I love to see the most tenacious of trees clinging on to the last of their colored vestments. I also enjoy the more seasonable or dry years, which yields boughs that brim full with copious, bold foliage! This year, mere skeleton of trees graced the landscape, but I actually don’t mind those Novembers when the leaves have all but given up. I find the trees’ inner frameworks - their bare, reaching bones - as beautiful and intriguing as those trees adorned in their finest fall finery.

Plus, when all the leaves have fallen, it’s easier to spot mistletoe!

It was my mother who only recently pointed out that the large, leafy spheres up in the highest boughs of the denuded trees were mistletoe. Prior, I was either unobservant of the masses and/or just assumed they were nests of some sort.

Since I’ve discovered it, mistletoe has held quite the charm over me. I’ve even delved into exhaustive mistletoe research over this new obsession. For instance, did you know that mistletoe is a parasite and eventually kills its host tree (although it takes a rather long time!)? Also, some research claims that back in the day, it was unsociable to kiss in public unless under mistletoe, which explains mistletoe’s popularity in the past! And did you know that the traditional way to harvest mistletoe and loose the orbs from their perches is to shoot it down from the tree with a shotgun? People still do that to this day! I, of course, immediately put “Shoot down a gob of mistletoe with a shotgun” on my ‘”Bucket List.” Nothing says winter kisses and budding romance like a shotgun, ya know?

However, even with all my research and new-found knowledge, my experience with live mistletoe is, tragically, very limited. The only real mistletoe I have ever been intimate with is the fake ball of it that my mother would hang from the 70’s amber lamp in the front hallway every year for Christmas. This obviously fake adornment was so lush and green, and brimming with berries that I always thought it was ivy. But as I got older, and relative’s gross and intrusive kissing comments started, I learned of the history and custom of mistletoe.

With my recent increased infatuation of the stuff, I decided to get my own ball of mistletoe to hang in my home, even though I do not have a 70s-style amber lamp from which to hang it.  I even planned to one-up my mother’s old, now raggedy, and obviously fake ball of plastic foliage; I was going to get real mistletoe, because that’s how my 18^th century household rolls.

Acquiring real mistletoe, I soon discovered however, is a near impossible task. Apparently there are mistletoe farms which produce the stuff for retail outlets- the biggest and most prolific being in Texas – but they rarely offer real mistletoe in its ball form. I’m not sure why – it’s too large? Too ugly? Too difficult to harvest? Too rare?

Fine, I’ll get a spring instead, I thought. One small sprig of real mistletoe still beats a manufactured plastic ball. But, no! Sprigs are hard to find too! And if one is able to find a spring, one may discover that real mistletoe is ugly! It’s not a lush green at all – it’s a gross, dried-out sage green and the leaves are tiny and non-descript. When one can actually find a fresh sprig, one will discover they are usually sold in a festive red box with a clear cellophane window. This window serves to disappointingly reveal a sickly, dried, smashed looking piece of sad foliage, all brittle and ugly. Who wants something so sickly and decidedly not festive adorning their home? No wonder mistletoe is falling out of favor.

So, my dreams of finding real mistletoe evaporated, and instead I bought the most symmetrical, luscious, festive ball of fake mistletoe with a foam core to ever exist! Now if I could only find an amber lamp.

So, that was my experiences with trying to acquire some mistletoe of my very own. But what about those balls that festoon our pilgrimage down to VA? Well, over the past few years we noticed a dearth of large ugly orbs up in the towering, skeletal trees along our route. As the passenger on these voyages to the countryside, I’m usually on Mistletoe lookout and shout at every gob I see. In the past, even Michael would cry out “Mistletoe!” as he was driving because they were so prolific and noticeable that the driver could spot them - which may or may not have been a rather dangerous game to play.

However, these last few years, my time spent Mistletoe hunting as a captive passenger didn’t pass the time well. Each year, I’d spot fewer and fewer gobs. There was actually no mistletoe to be found this year, although I was consistently tricked by the large squirrel nests nestled in the crooks of trees. Or sometimes even bird nests of unusual size. I’d cry out “Mistletoe!”, but upon closer inspection and noting that the orb was nestled in the crook of a branch and not on the outward tips where mistletoe grows, I would correct myself with a disappointing “Squirrel Nest.”

I have suspected that over the years mistletoe has been in decline, but this year I was able conclude that, yes, mistletoe is disappearing from the outstretched branches of our oak, birch and maple trees. Maybe it’s because of the super cold winters we have been experiencing? But I must know: where did all the mistletoe go?

I did some internet research, but there was a surprisingly anemic outcry of people noticing the same tragedy. Why aren’t people noticing? Why aren’t they upset? Maybe it’s because Mistletoe is a parasite and kills people’s trees? Or, because we can socially perform PDAs without the guise of mistletoe? Maybe the tradition and demand is dying because people’s mothers don’t hang fake balls of it from garish 70’s amber lights in the hallway anymore?

Upon even further research, I was able to find two measly articles that shed a small bit of light on this phenomenon, but neither offered either proof that there is a decline or a scientific explanation for a decline: Where Has all the Mistletoe Gone? and Mistletoe Gets the Kiss Off? Oddly enough, neither article specifically addresses Virginia’s dearth; one talks about a decline in Texas, and the other a decline in New York. The one article blames a drought in Texas, where the biggest mistletoe farm is, for the lack of the real stuff in today’s florist and gift shops. But no mention of Virginia’s mistletoe.

So, what about Virginia’s plight? After even more research, I did find a blog post regarding the decline of desert mistletoe that may help solve the mystery. (Apparently this verdant parasite grows in the hot dry climates of the Sonoran or Mojave deserts as well.) In this post was buried the following nugget of info:

“When cold weather conditions damage the year’s crop of mistletoe berries, [Desert Mistletoe] populations have been observed to go through precipitous declines.”

Ah-ha! As I suspected, it could be the severe near record-breaking cold that the northeast corridor experienced these past two winters! Apparently mistletoe spreads when birds eat its berries and disperse them elsewhere. I’m not sure if unseasonable cold kills existing mistletoe or not, but if the berries are unable to survive, and the birds can’t disperse them, there is no proliferations, which could eventually result in a decline.

So, although I am sad that our pilgrimage to Virginia is no longer garnished with mistletoe, I am glad the mistletoe mystery is solved.