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White Berried Shrub

8 years ago

Bombay Hook Wildlife Refuge, Smyrna, DE is the location. In certain areas of the refuge these shrubs are abundant. Some are loaded with white berries, some have none. Can you name it?

Featured Answer

sam_md
Original Author

last year

Merry Christmas everyone. By now everyone has decked the halls with holly but don't forget the mistletoe.

6 years ago NoVA Dave made a suggestion about the berries. I gave it a try on red maple in the local supermarket parking lot. Here's what they look like today.

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Comments (9)

NHBabs z4b-5a NH
8 years ago
Mistletoe growing on a shrub?
floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
8 years ago
Some sort of Mistletoe - we only have one species here, so I can't say any more about it.
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Cornus racemosa has white berries. Cornus foemina, Cornus alba, Cornus alternifolia and Cornus amomum have blue berries (but you don't have Cornus alternifolia since the leaves are opposite). I would just leave the berries for the birds - that is very useful in itself.
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Tosco, I've never tried to grow Winterberries in shade, so let's assume that shade was the problem for the first (7) years. Obviously, conditions were good for the 8th year (they berried). Now I had drought affect my Winterberry output last year. Some cultivars berried ... others did not. However, all but one (a different one from last year) are berrying this year. I'd suggest that you may be missing a male pollinator. It's possible that your female plants were being polinated by a male plant in the area that you didn't know about. It's possible that that (male) plant has been removed, etc. Another, possibly more likely, scenario ... is that the male(s) that is available for pollinating your plants ... does not, typically, bloom at the same time as your females, ... thus making pollination impossible. The one year that you did get berries may have been more of a abnormal occurrence ... as something caused your male and female plants to overlap in their blooming periods. What I would do is to get and plant both an early male (ex. Jim Dandy)... and a late male (ex. Southern Gentleman) ... so that you will have all of your bases covered.
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I live quite close to The Garden in the Woods, so maybe I'll wander over soon. Our house was owned by a man who lived there for 90 years! The property had mostly trees, but he used to feed the squirrels peanuts in the shell. We're still finding them in the yard. I mentioned to my neighbor that we were always finding peanuts and she told us all about the previous owner. I wish we'd known him. At any rate, I love old things. My house has many antiques and we have plants MIL gave us from her childhood home. They're quite special to us. We have pachysandra that came from the house DH grew up in, and they got it from MIL's father, long deceased. Who knows where he got it? I've given some to my friends. Gardening creates quite a community, doesn't it! -Donna
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sam_md
Original Author
8 years ago
MISTLETOE???? That explains all the kissing (-}{-)

How do I propagate it?
Dave in NoVA • N. Virginia • zone 7A
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
Just paste some berries onto your trees. Usually birds do this for you.

Hey, it's evergreen!
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
8 years ago
Probably not something that I would want to introduce to my trees. It can be difficult to get rid of once you realize that you don't want it.
sam_md
Original Author
8 years ago
Not really the best pic, I squeezed the berries, each berry contains one seed. Interesting to see the green of chlorophyll in the seed. Can you name any other woody plant with chlorophyll in the seed? I can't. The Mistletoe has neither top nor bottom, it is neither herb nor tree, sort of in between worlds. Only female plants produce berries. It's fruit ripens on the Winter Solstice. No part of the plant ever touches the ground, the Druids believed that if Mistletoe touched the ground while harvesting, it lost its powers.

My American Mistletoe is Phoradendron flavescens, uncommon in my state. I only see it on Acer rubrum where it acts as a hemiparasite and does little to no hard to the host. I understand that this may not be true for other mistletoe species.

Finally, the Great Purple Hairstreak, a real beauty, is dependent on this plant. Mistletoe is it's only larval host.
ViburnumValley central KY Bluegrass z6
last year
Mistletoe is a pretty common plant around the central Kentucky Bluegrass. It commonly hangs out on Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) and Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) most commonly, but it shows up in Black Cherry (Prunus serotina), Elm (Ulmus sp.), and Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) with some regularity in other locales.

Here are some images from the Valley earlier this evening.
floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
last year
last modified: last year
Excellent guerilla gardening, Sam. I hope your mistletoes are left alone to flourish. The species we get here rarely grows on maple. Its favourite trees are apple and poplar.

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