Mistletoe

A picture of a very exotic variety of mistletoe turned up yesterday, the Australian Christmas tree, otherwise the Nuytsia floribunda, snapped above and described at reference 1 below. Unlike our own mistletoe, in that it sucks its water and minerals out of the roots of its neighbours, rather than by attaching itself to a stem. Maybe similar to the close relation that many trees have with the fungi living in among their roots?

But in both cases the branching structure through which the sucking is done is called the haustorium and all the mistletoes are what biologists call obligate hemiparasitics and they all live in the order Santalales, a rather confused order with plenty of continuing debate about how their evolution happened.

I have been reminded that the outside xylem carries water and minerals up the plant while the inside phloem carries carbohydrates from the leaves, around the rest of the plant. Something I last needed to know for the purposes of O-level biology in the early 1960's.

And I have learned that English mistletoe, a lover of apple trees, radiated outwards from the West Midlands, including here, in particular, the orchards of Worcestershire. Although the last really good Worcester apples that I have eaten were bought in Royston, on the other side of the country. An early apple which neither keeps nor stores well.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuytsia. The exotic.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santalales. The taxonomy.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe. Regular, Worcestershire, mistletoe.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/03/wilderness.html. Most recent notice.