Our Search for the Mystical Mistletoe

Download or read book Our Search for the Mystical Mistletoe written by William Overlease and published by . This book was released on 2005-06-01 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1993 Edith and I were told that mistletoe no longer occurred in Indiana. This intrigued us to the point that we decided to try and see if we could find it. For three years we investigated southern Indiana near the Ohio River. Though not common, we did find small colonies and often only individual plants all along the river from Illinois on the west to near the Ohio border on the east. We enjoyed the adventure of the search so much that we wondered about its distribution in the nearby states. First Kentucky, then Illinois, and finally Ohio. By now we were hooked on mistletoe and continued our search throughout eastern United States during our travels. We were primarily interested in its abundance, its distribution, and in particular, its host tree species. Every effort was made to make our counts accurate, and our tree identifications taxonomically correct. We had been told, by some interested field botanists that it wasn't host specific but occurred on almost any tree species. We found that it was quite host specific and that the hosts varied from region to region. One of the most interesting questions that resulted from our field work was why the mistletoe only occurred on a tree species in certain parts of its range. For example the wide ranging sycamore and red maple. A mistletoe seed source was commonly noted near both species in many parts of their range, but no mistletoe. In local regions, mistletoe was common to abundant. The following maps summarize what we have observed.