Tons of it in Sonoma County, unfortunately. Supposedly Luther Burbank experimented with it quite a bit and the closer you get to his place, the more that there is.

It's here in MidTenn, I've got a little in a few of my trees. It seems to favor elms and tupelos.

I really love this shrub. For us it is found mainly on Red Maple. We always point it out when we go winter botanizing, we only see it in winter. Phoradendron flavescens is how I learned it but the name may have changed. Here is my thread about it. The Great Purple Hairstreak is only found around mistletoe.

I love mistletoe. Ours is Viscum album and it’s fairly widespread in my area, especially on old apples and poplars. It’s an important crop which has helped save some of our old cider orchards from the plough.

That's interesting, it is more common on linden trees here. In fact 78% of all viscum album was found growing on linden in a study. Unfortunately I don't have any on my trees, or even in my county. It seems to be very local here, it grows only in a limited amount of places, but it is quite common in those places.

I have bunches growing in Quercus buckleyi

It grows mostly on water oak here.

Linden is quite a common host in the British Isles too, Huggorm.

On the east coast I have only seen south of Richmond, VA. Would love a tip from sam on where to see it in the immediate DC/Baltimore area. Could be more common on the eastern shore, but I hardly go over there in winter. (I hardly go over there, period!)

I heard someone complaining about the amount of them in Texas ash. I think they were south of Dallas Texas.

Mistletoe is very common on Quercus virginiana and other Q. species along the coast of S. Carolina, where it can lead to the decline and death of trees during times of stress.

Mistletoe removal can provide income generating work for arborists who are contracted to improve the health of valuable trees.

I see it frequently in northern Alabama, too, where I now live, too.

Did not realize there were so many independently evolved Mistletoes with such a diversity of hosts and forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe  Of course, New Zealand has an incredibly showy one. Good luck legally importing it - NZ would probably not be pleased to see their seeds leaving, and the US not pleased to have them entering. But imagine the sales pitch, "Step right up folks! Get your Peraxilla tetrapetala! Turns most trees into a spectacular Metrosideros lookalikes in just a few short years!"

Peraxilla tetrapetala - Wikipedia

You just can't help but be awed by the wonderful weirdness of Antipodal life...from Freycinetia, Monkey Puzzle or Bunya Bunya, to Astacopsis and platypus, to this.

That red mistletoe from New Zealand is a real eye popper.

I think it's harder to import seeds to NZ than export from there. But I wouldn't be surprised if that red mistletoe has some specific climatic needs that is hard to meet in other parts of the world.

Is there no Christmas mistletoe tradition in the US? It’s a saleable crop here. In gardens people encourage it rather than removing it.

"But I wouldn't be surprised if that red mistletoe has some specific
climatic needs that is hard to meet in other parts of the world."

Oh, definitely. I was of course being facetious to imply it could be hawked by the likes of Wayside Gardens to people in Peoria, KS. Though it would probably grow, on the right substrate, somewhere along the west coast of the US.

I think it's harder to import seeds to NZ than export from there.

Increasingly countries are moving towards various 'biodiversity protection' laws where the flow of genetic material of native plants outwith the country is tightly regulated, particularly anything considered threatened or vulnerable. I don't know if NZ has such a law yet, but they could. The is related to the Nagoya Protocols, the effect of which I've vaguely alluded to in various posts of mine. Can't be too specific, but suffice it to say million-dollar breeding programs have had to have years of work tossed in an incinerator because of legal wranglings between countries - insanity!

Tons of it in Sonoma County unfortunately. Supposedly Luther Burbank experimented with it...... I wish Sara Malone had specified that she referred to the European Viscum album in that comment.

This NJ Pine Barrens reference declares American Mistletoe a threatened species. It is worth noting that the poaching of Trailing arbutus, ground pine, partridge berry, tea berry, mistletoe and flowering branches of mountain laurel was once widely practiced but hopefully not so much anymore.

"The above pic is from Virginia's Norfolk Zoological Park right over the
tiger cage. The host tree is water oak. Around here this is typical
as to how American mistletoe grows, it can only be collected with a
rifle."

And in that case, a tranquilizer gun!

I have childhood memories of my uncle, down south, shooting down mistletoe for Christmas. I'll have to ask him if he still does it each year.

"it can only be collected with a rifle."

Could become a problem for whoever is at the other end of the trajectory.

Sorry, this is the only mistletoe that I know! Again the problem with common names....

Here are recent pix of American Mistletoe near Gumboro, Del. When the host tree, in this case Red Maple, is leafless AM is easier to spot. Notice how this hemiparasite appears to have no ill effect on the host tree. Did you ever consider that this plant is extraterrestrial? No part ever touches the ground. Maybe that's why ancient Druids felt the European counterpart had magical powers.

I suppose what you have there, Sam, is Phoradendron leucarpum (oak mistletoe). It can be very harmful to already stressed trees. We unfortunately have it here, but infestations are not usually even as dense as the one in your photos. I've noticed small bunches (usually just one or two per tree) on a number of trees around my farm in Tennessee.

Not a lot but we have in far south Missouri in Branson area..along lake

sam_md and davidrt28 (zone 7) , you can find pockets of mistletoe along I-66 heading west out of the DC. Apparently it can be found in nearly every county of Virginia.

I do not know what types of trees are preferred as host. In winter when I see the mistletoe, the trees are leafless and hard to ID from a freeway.