A UGA colleague stopped by my office to see if he could come
out and gather some
mistletoe.

Our house is partly surrounded by trees. Out beyond the
borders of the tended area are
woods, bushy areas and fields. We have lots of mistletoe in the
water oaks near the house,
so I said, "Come on."

This got me to speculating as to why mistletoe is so often
close to houses and other
buildings.

Where do you see the most mistletoe? In the middle of the
woods? Or in front yards,
backyards and the courthouse square? Our yard has lots of
mistletoe, but our woods have
little or none.

American mistletoe is a parasitic plant that lives on
branches. It will live on 100
kinds of trees in the Southeast. But water oak, Quercus
niger, is perhaps its
favorite Georgia host.

When we built our house 18 years ago, mistletoe was scarce in
our yard. Since then it
has taken over to the point that our water oaks are
suffering.

I’ve noticed that certain birds — one species in particular –
– move the mistletoe from
tree to tree and branch to branch.

Birds eat mistletoe berries. Then, after digesting most of
the soft parts, they pass
their lacquer-like droppings, which stick the seeds to the
branches.

Thus held to the branch, the seeds germinate, and the new
plant penetrates the bark.
The branch grows around the new plant, and the newly established
mistletoe sends out new
leaves and twigs.

Mistletoe plants often become so numerous that they may
deform and eventually kill the
tree.

Georgia has well over 300 kinds of birds, but only a few
berry-eating species are here
in the winter to eat mistletoe berries. One of those, a highly
valued bird of Southern
song and story, is the No. 1 spreader of backyard mistletoe.

The culprit is the mockingbird.

Mockingbirds are fruit-eating birds. But their habits are
unlike those of robins and
cedar waxwings, which roam in flocks throughout the countryside,
eating berries whenever
they find them.

Flocks of cedar waxwings and robins often don’t linger long.
They’re here today, gone
tomorrow. They don’t have the mockingbird’s love of backyards
and courthouse squares.

The mockingbird is with us day after day, week after week,
all winter long, to leave
his sticky, seed-laden droppings on the branches of our trees.
It’s as if he’s planning
his own future food supply.

Mockingbirds sometimes appear in wild places, especially near
concentrations of fruit.
But they’re most common near people. They seem to find just the
right habitat in our
backyards.

I haven’t seen any research to support this idea. But I’ll
bet if ornithologists study
the relationships between peoples’ yards, mockingbirds and
mistletoe, they’ll find
mockingbirds are the primary deliverers of mistletoe.

For mockingbird lovers, I guess this is a reason to like
mistletoe. More mistletoe
means better winter habitat for mockers. Mistletoe is also the
larval food plant of the
great blue hairstreak, one of the Southeast’s most beautiful
butterflies.

If you have trees heavily infested with mistletoe, maybe this
winter you can plant some
mistletoe-resistant trees. Then when your current trees die,
your new trees will be well
on their way.