Mistletoe

Mistletoe on a street-planted Rowan tree in Hayes.  Male plant in flower.  16 February 2016.

Mistletoe, Viscum album, is familiar for its sticky white fruits and the supposition that you should kiss someone if they are standing under a sprig.  Few are familiar with its flowers, and that's not surprising, for they are not very showy.

It's also not well known that the plants come in separate genders.  The male flowers above are all you will get on that mistletoe plant.

Rowan with two Mistletoe plants in Hayes, 17 March 2016.  Female Mistletoe on the left, male on the right.

Luckily for me, this small Rowan is only a short walk from my house and has two Mistletoe plants on it at around head height, one of each gender.  Mistletoe is a parasite that sucks the goodness from its host, so this Rowan is doing quite well to still look so healthy.  It is smaller than other trees on the same street, but Rowans are small trees anyway.

Mistletoe on a street-planted Rowan tree in Hayes.  Female plant with flowers and berries.  9 March 2016.

Here are the berries on the female plant, and above them the female flowers, only noticeable at all if you look carefully for them.  They are reported to be pollinated by small insects, which obviously manage without the showy display of petals that characterise bee-pollinated plants.

The sticky seeds are spread by birds, mostly Mistle-thrushes in the UK, hence the bird's name.  They do not seem to have been very hungry this winter as there are lots of berries left. 

I was interested to see that the male flowers opened about a month before the female ones.  But there was still plenty of male pollen available when the female flowers eventually cracked open.