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The Mistletoe Pages

About the original mistletoe of tradition & folklore

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The Mistletoe Pages

A French Mistletoe Seller from ILN,

A French Mistletoe Seller, as depicted in the Illustrated London News in the 19th century

About this site

The website mistletoe.org.uk was set up by mistletoe enthusiast Jonathan Briggs over 30 years ago. There are several parts to the site (see links below). This part of the site, the Mistletoe Pages, provides information on mistletoe traditions, biology, conservation and growing your own. This version of the Mistletoe Pages was built in Autumn 2022, with revisions in 2024 and 2025. More revisions will follow soon.

Links

English Mistletoe Shop
Mistletoe Matters Consultancy
Jonathan's Mistletoe Diary
FAQs, downloads, contact
Facebook
Bluesky

Feed from the Mistletoe Diary

Ecclesiastical Mistletoe
December 24, 2025
As a tree branch parasite mistletoe is, technically, rootless. But it has other roots, historical roots, from traditions. Those are mostly considered pagan in origin, as indeed is any midwinter celebration of the return of lighter days, using evergreen plants. Fir trees, holly, ivy, yew, mistletoe – all are used as symbols of ongoing life […]
Mistletoe decline stories – still out there, still wrong
December 20, 2025
A recent YouTube video from Kew came to my attention this week. All about our mistletoe, Viscum album, detailing its biology and growth and propagation, plus its biodiversity and some stuff on traditions and legends. All very very (almost suspiciously!) similar (even the title) to the words and phrasing I’ve used in talks and articles […]
Du Maurier, Jamaica Inn, and mistletoe
December 14, 2025
Whilst reading Jamaica Inn, Daphne Du Maurier’s tale of smugglers on Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor, recently I was interested to find two references to mistletoe at Christmas, seemingly suggesting that its usage was commonplace at the time and place the novel is set. That time was not precisely stated by Du Maurier but was, according to […]
Missouri Mistletoe looks European
December 12, 2025
Here’s a puzzler. Some background first – in the USA the native mistletoes are very different to our European Viscum album and, in multiple ways, inferior in appearance (branching, leaf shape, berry size etc) to ours. The species used at Christmas over there are mostly from the mistletoe genus Phoradendron, which do at least have […]
Growing Your Own – advice and caveats
December 6, 2025
The English Mistletoe Shop, the retail website which I’ve jointly run for many years now, is not supplying mistletoe grow-kits this year. For me this will be the first winter in 20 years that I’ve not supplied these kits, originally developed for the (now defunct) Tenbury English Mistletoe Enterprise website, so it is a significant […]
Mistletoe events – Washington DC, Brentor, Devon, Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire
December 4, 2025
It’s mistletoe-theme time again – lots of stuff with ‘mistletoe’ in the title that’s not, really, got a lot to do with mistletoe. All those ‘Mistletoe Markets’ so popular in the US, all those ‘Mistletoe Murders’ in that US TV series I’ve never actually watched. And not forgetting all those mistletoe-themed products – particularly my […]
More mistletoe = more biodiversity (especially bunny rabbits)
December 1, 2025
Can mere mistletoe presence increase biodiversity on the ground below? That seems an odd concept but, actually, studies over several years on mistletoes in warmer countries, and particularly on Australian mistletoes, have shown this to be the case. The impacts are mainly to do with nutrient-enriched leaf litter under the infected host tree, which alter […]
Mistletoe Season 2025/6
November 24, 2025
It’s mistletoe time, yet again. And this year the berries have been ripening particularly early, some whitening up a month ago in October – which is very early indeed, and somewhat disconcerting! But they’re looking good now, many fully translucent and already glowing in the winter sun (when it actually shines). Mistletoe Diary is reporting […]

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