mistletoe management

Spent today with the Colwall Orchards Group, doing some mistletoe management.  Colwall is a village (actually a group of small hamlets – Upper Colwall, Colwall Green etc etc) towards the south end of the Malvern Hills on the left-hand (western) side.  Which makes it just in Herefordshire.

The orchards group there  is a relatively new one, who have been reviewing the state and status of traditional orchards within their patch over the last year or so.  Key figures in the group include Helen Stace of Natural England, who spoke about their progress and plans for conservation and management of their orchards at the Sheffield Orchards Conference back in September (see previous blog entry). 

Also from Natural England is Tim Dixon, who I last met many many years ago on the Pocklington Canal – when he was being paid by English Nature (as was) to make the case for the protected sites alongside and within the highly biodiverse and then unrestored canal corridor and I was being paid by British Waterways to (reluctantly) try to argue a case for restoration for boats not doing any harm...  Which is a comforting reminder for me of why I resigned.  We agree not to dwell on past events, and talk about mistletoe instead…

Now, why manage mistletoe?  Isn’t it ‘rare’ and all that?  Well, no it’s not rare, not round here anyway.  And rare or not, management is the best way to conserve it, especially in apple orchards – which is what I spoke about at the Sheffield conference (see comment above) in September.

So, today was a day of bashing mistletoe to help with mistletoe and apple tree conservation.  The main difference between what we did today and most mistletoe work at this time of year is that we pruned/cut out both male and female plants.  This is fundamental to good mistletoe management – most people these days just prune the female, as that has berries and they can use it/sell it at Christmas – but doing that dooms the tree to becoming more and more overgrown with the (relatively) valueless male plants – which is not a good thing in the long term…

There’ll be more on this story (I hope) in the press this season – but for now here’s a link to the paper (that outlines this issue) I presented at the Sheffield Hallam conference on Orchards and Groves: Their History, Ecology, Culture and Archaeology back in September.

And here are some pictures from today...

Even in apple orchards much mistletoe is out of reach...

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Nicola]

It's good to see people writing about mistletoe management - I've been searching for this sort of info for a couple of months now (having moved into a place in Worcestershire with two very heavily mistletoe-laden apple trees), and previously I've only found information on how to grow mistletoe or buy it! At least now I know that it *is* OK to cut it all back. Most of the sites I'd found concentrate on the endangered nature of the species rather than how to make sure it doesn't overwhelm the trees it grows on.

Incidentally, can you advise me on how I might go about finding out how to sell my mistletoe (or even give it away - it seems a waste to prune it and just get rid of the cut mistletoe)?

[canal man]

Ahhh, so that's why you resigned eh Jonathan? I always thought you were so happy with BW....I really did!

How's that wonderful woven basket doing that you used to bring your paperwork in to Watford with you?

Whatever you;re up to, it was always good to work with you and I hope you're doing well!