Family: LORANTHACEAE
This common mistletoe, with its unmistakable, skyward-curving flowers, is flowering on roadside gums west of Toowoomba at the moment. It is a plant of the inland, usually found west of the Great Dividing Range.We rarely see this mistletoe on anything other than eucalypts, with mountain coolibah Eucalyptus orgadophila, being a favourite host. However, it does sometimes pop up on on some dry rainforest species (e.g. Acmena and Litsea species) and even on some introduced plants.
It is a showy mistletoe, and one which would be attractive as a garden plant, with its bright orange flowers that light up the host tree, and carpet the ground beneath.
Like the Amyema species, Dendrophthöe glabrescens is a host plant for Jezabel and Azure butterflies.
The mistletoes which we notice most often on gums are Amyema species. They attach themselves to a small branch, developing a conspicuous “join” (called a haustorium).
Haustorium, Amyema miquellii.
Dendrophthöe species don’t do this. Instead, they send a network of root-like runners snaking along and around their supporting branches, and plugging in at a number of points. The branch which supports them is not killed in the process.
4 comments:
How pretty! I've never seen this before :-)
Yes, isn't it pretty? And it often occurs situated at about face-height, for our maximum viewing pleasure.
Do they have a negative impact on host tree?
Not any significant negative effect. All mistletoes do take as much water from the plant as would one of their own branches of an equivalent size, so that is really neither here nor there as a negative impact. An exception is a very old tree which shows its increasing decrepitude by becoming prone to mistletoe infestation. A healthy tree actually rejects excess mistletoes (by closing its "veins") if it is losing too much water.
Nothing passes from the mistletoe to the plant, so "poisoning" by mistletoe just doesn't happen.
There is a persistent, and completely false, "old farmer's tale" that mistletoes kill trees. I think it probably persists here in Australia because nobody wants to admit that the tree in question, which had a few perfectly innocent mistletoes on it, actually died from human actions affecting the tree's root zone. These include building,(roads or buildings), cultivation, fertilisation, or being used in a pasture as a cattle shelter (cattle compress the soil and over-fertilise the soil with their waste). Trees also die of old age, which people seem to forget. When it happens, it can be regretted by property owners who haven't thought to have a few younger trees already growing to take their place, so look for something else to blame.
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