Have you heard of the Western Hemisphere tribe that steals hemiparasites from their hosts and uses them as the centerpieces of a ritual that goes back centuries? People hang from the ceiling special organisms that feed on the resources of others. Once situated properly, they gather in groups to take turns standing beneath them in an effort to entice willing osculators.
Read This To Become the Mistletoe Expert This Holiday Season
Mistletoe is a parasite
Parasites live off host organisms. Like orchids, they need a host that gives them a place to stay. Host is an iffy word here, because the parasites weren’t invited. They moved in. It’s like when hotels call us guests, but insist we pay.
Mistletoe is an angiosperm
The 300,000 species of angiosperms bear flowers and fruits that enclose seeds. The word means seed-within-a-fruit. Angiosperm is one of the accidentally naughty words in biology class that always set juveniles tittering.
There are a lot of bio and tech words involved, but the deal is that this parasite has a special organ (more tittering and when the teacher insists we stop tittering, a roomful of juveniles titters again, knowingly).
A slender thread from the mistletoe seed penetrates the exterior of the host
It plugs itself into the plumbing that carries the nutrients to the treetops. Thus tapped in, it siphons off the water- and mineral- containing sap it needs. Mistletoe is that rare parasite than also acts as a regular plant, collecting food and water from the air around it, too. Thus the name hemiparasite. The process involves things like xylem and phloem, and it’s how the plant remains green all year.
How does the plant get up in the tree?
Birds. They eat the mistletoe berries that pass through their digestive tracts. Unharmed, the seeds are excreted along with the usual waste matter. Mistletoe seeds are coated with an extra-sticky substance that glues them to the tree branches where the birds perch. In time, a clump of mistletoe grows.
Mistletoe was seen by the superstitious to have magical powers because it wasn’t like other plants
The ancients saw it was always up high, toward the heavens. In the winter, when the trees dropped all their leaves and the dull grey-brown branches were bare, the evergreen mistletoe stood out in high contrast. The logical conclusion for pre-scientific minds was that the only way a plant with no roots could possibly survive was because it had some sort of magical powers.
Once you cross the it-must-be-magic bridge, you’re giving things powers they don’t deserve
It’s the go-to action of the scientifically ignorant. Thinking a mistletoe plant is magic opened the door for centuries of peddling it as a cure for what ails you. Even today, some people swallow mistletoe capsules, others drink mistletoe tea, and a hard-core bunch insists on injecting it directly into a vein. Careful with the tea, because hot water destroys its beneficial effect.
Why do they call it common sense when so few people have it?
Much folk wisdom is actually folk ignorance because more of it is wrong than right. You’ll find people who claim mistletoe magically cures nearly everything from hangnails to ulcers to impotence and back again. This is exactly what snake-oil salesmen have done since the first miracle cures. And they continue selling magic cures today.
What’s a mistle and what does it have to do with toes?
Nothing. Long ago, the word that finally became mistletoe was the equivalent of bird-turd-that-sits-on-a-branch. Birds spend more time perching than flying. Their waste disposal is frequent because their high metabolisms process food quickly. Waste is expelled through a cloaca, the single opening that is the exit point for their digestive, urinary, and reproductive tracts.
The ancients observed that mistletoe grew where bird dung was found on tree branches
The modern name mistletoe is less accurate than the for-centuries name turd-on-a-twig, perhaps an early relative of soap-on-a-rope. Remember the bit about the seeds inside the fruit that birds ate and later expelled after passing unharmed through their digestive tract, much like a bad clam? They’re the ones glued to the branch.
So where did the kissing come from?
The origin of the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe is in dispute. The Greeks, the British, Scandinavians, and Germans all get credited, a situation well-known to regular readers. A likely answer is that kissing under the mistletoe started during the pagan festival the Romans held for Saturn, god of agriculture, sowing, harvesting, and seeds.
The Saturnalia festival was more or less the predecessor of Carnival
Many pre-Christian celebrations were held around the time of the winter solstice, December 21 or 22, the shortest day of the year. Mistletoe was not associated with Christmas until the 1700s.
When the berries are gone, the kissing stops
I never knew before this that the proper mistletoe procedure is to remove one berry every time someone kisses under it. This must be why I also read how it’s bad luck to kiss under mistletoe that’s lost its berries. I never saw any white berries, which probably means my mistletoe kisses were all doomed.
The Druids and mistletoe
Mistletoe grew in many host trees, but the Druids were only interested in mistletoe that grew in one particular type of oak tree. When they found it, priests dressed in white cut the mistletoe free with golden sickles shaped like the ones on Russia’s flag. White sheets were spread beneath the tree to prevent the sacred mistletoe from touching the earth when it was cut free. One story has it that two white oxen were then sacrificed under the tree to please the gods.
Celtic rituals and Norse myths
Mistletoe was considered by many to be a sacred plant because it lived in the place between earth and sky, life and death, what was seen and what was unseen. Laugh at them if you will for being so nutty, but if you told them stories about a virgin commoner giving birth to the son of a god in a shed who later rose from the dead, they’d think you were the nutty one.
Bonus
- The picture below is from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: It’s Mr. Fezzwig’s Annual Christmas Ball. That’s quite a clump of mistletoe, big enough to be the entire plant. The biggest decoration I ever saw was a twig.
- If you have pets, don’t leave any mistletoe lying around: If your dogs, cats, or whatevers chew on enough of it, you’ll be cleaning the floor of multi-port ejecta. As a bonus, the animal’s condition may last for several days.
- An ocean apart: In the U.S., American mistletoe is used as a winter holiday decoration. Europeans use it in traditional herbal medicine, continuing traditions established by superstitious people somewhere back in the dark days.
- In Norse mythology, one brother killed another with a projectile tipped with a sharp point made from a mistletoe twig: The boys’ mother cried and her tears turned into white berries that ripen each December.
- Most holiday decorations sold as mistletoe are not: The easy way to tell is that they have red berries, meaning they’re some sort of easily obtained, less expensive holly. Holly is actually a better winter decoration because it combines the traditional red and green of Christmas. This holiday season, check out the mistletoe you come across. When it has red berries, tell them what you found out over at LetsTakeACloserLook.
