A pic of that mistletoe sculpture I mentioned in yesterday's blog...
The stainless steel structure was made by sculptor Steve Blaylock - who is pictured kissing his wife Rachel underneath it (I hope it's securely tied...) at RHS Harlow Carr. The pic (click to enlarge) is by Richard Doughty and borrowed from http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk
Today was the first of this year's wholesale auctions at Tenbury... will add more text later, though nothing particularly new to report other than to review prices etc...
But here are a couple of pix for now, showing Nick Champion starting the mistletoe lots..
Lots of news reports over the weekend about the 'bumper crop' of mistletoe we've got this season, many quoting me as saying how good the berry crop is, and how this'll keep the prices down - which is good for a 'credit crunch Christmas'.
All this sounds very good but I think I must highlight two caveats:
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...
It may be still a little early for Christmas, but it's never too early for Chocolate. Silky smooth chocolate, steeped in sexy, pleasure-inducing theobromine and phenylethylamine (Theo who? Ethyl who?). Combine these with the fertility symbolism of ever-sexy mistletoe and you have a lip-sucking, tongue-licking combination... Yummmmmmmmmm.....
Sorry, got a a bit carried away there. And just to clarify, when I say combine choccies with mistletoe I don't actually mean blending the two literally. That would be far too powerful - the theobromine might react with the viscotoxins and... well, anything could happen.
No, what I mean is mistletoe-themed chocolate, much less directly harmful, but no less suggestive. And I'd like to highlight two somewhat contrasting versions that are available this season.
The first is Hotel Chocolat's 'Kissing Mistletoe' - described as "Smoochily smooth 40% milk chocolate cast into christmas mistletoe shapes". Definitely Yummy (HC's 40% is very very nice...) but a trifle expensive at £6.00 for 120 grams (that's 10 x 12g pieces). Plus, unless you live in reach of an HC store, £3.95 delivery...
An interesting concept though - dispensing with the real thing and casting chocolate into a mistletoe shape. But, is it just me that thinks their casting looks more like the American mistletoe than proper European Viscum album? Probably it is just me, but I think I'm right - they've modelled it on the wrong mistletoe.
Verdict? Probably yummy, but not worth spending £6 plus delivery on fake mistletoe modelled on incorrect mistletoe. Instead, wait until January - it'll be reduced then and available as an end of line...
In the meantime, if you need a chocolate-flavoured mistletoe moment, why not go down-market (remember that credit crunch!), forget 'Kissing Mistletoe' and go instead for Mars/Galaxy's 'Mistletoe Kisses'?
I reported on these chocolate bars last year - and they're much cheaper (about £0.60 for about 40g - so about 4x less than Hotel Chocolat's Kissing Mistletoe). OK, they're not pure chocolate (part caramel) and what is chocolate isn't 40% chocolate. Also they're not mistletoe-shaped - but they do have a little mistletoe logo embossed on each one... But, most importantly, they're (relatively) cheap and are freely available down the supermarket.
And, if you believe this ad, they're made by gnomes and mistletoe-fairies. Nuff said...
A quick rant, partly to test whether blogging direct from ScribeFire really works.
In my online mistletoe ramblings, I often come across sites that have holly labelled as mistletoe - and they're nearly all in the US. But how can anyone mistake holly - a prickly-leaved red-berried bush/tree for mistletoe, a totally non-prickly small tree parasite whose characteristic species (not all) have definitively white berries.
I don't know - but perhaps the clue is in my point that "they're nearly all in the US" (they did elect Dubya, twice!, and now seemed over-awed by someone who looks like a page in a specsavers catalogue - but no, I must keep politics [if that's what American elections are about] out of this blog!!).
So just who are the culprits on the holly = mistletoe front. Well, a quick google image search brings up CNN as the first offender - with their 'mistletoe' pic coming in the first 5 on google. Here's their pic (from this site)
It's so clearly holly that you have to wonder about CNN's grasp of both the natural world and traditional customs. But maybe if CNN are that thick I shouldn't be surprised about everyone else?
Well, let's have a quick look at Cafepress, a US-based design-your-own t-shirt, mug, thong etc site which is arguably a bit more grass-roots.
Is it worse or better than google for 'holly as mistletoe' when I run a mistletoe search? It's worse, much worse. First page brings up several holly themed 'mistletoe' logos. Cafepress make it difficult to copy them - but here's one taken from a screen-dump - and I think the caption sums up the problem nicely...
In ancient traditions Mistletoe has often been associated with lightning, partly because of its forked, lightning-like branching pattern (see the pic) and partly because of its growth on old trees, which are sometimes struck by lightning.
These old traditions have many variants, but usually involve hanging mistletoe in the house, sometimes all year-long, to ward off lightning strikes.
You don't hear much about this these days... but hey, here's a weird news story from Cambodia, showing that the mistletoe anti-lightning charm is still used there:
Not a very happy tale, but (to me at least) it is fantastic that mistletoe is still being used in this way. But what species of mistletoe are they using (and does it work?!)? There are many 100s of species around the world and only Viscum species similar to our own Viscum album has the forked branch effect - so is it just an old traditional association with mistletoe, or is the Cambodian mistletoe one of the forked-branch species?
Well, I'm not sure, and will have to double-check, but I think Viscum album itself may occur as far east as Cambodia - certainly there's at least one subspecies of V album in China. I'll come back with definitive info soon...
Just back from the Sheffield Orchards Conference (see blog entry for 3rd Sept) and am full of new ideas and initiatives to take forward in my campaign for better mistletoe management (see 3rd Sept and various rantings from last winter season). More on all that in due course.
But whilst there I was told about Ikea's mistletoe-themed kitchen worktop - which, of course, I just had to investigate. I assumed it was just one of those vague mistletoe-green items ( like those weird 'mistletoe-scented' candles you can buy at Christmas - which are really just a sort of mistletoe green - the scent is nothing to do wth mistletoe at all).
But to my surprise I found that it really is mistletoe-themed - a reversible (green one side, white the other) mistletoe foliage patterned surface. But why?
Even odder is that the only matching item I could find by searching the Ikea website is this 'free-hanging extractor hood' - which is designed for hanging over your kitchen island hob and contains lights and an extractor unit (capable of processing 274 m³/h and controlled, lights and fan, by the dangling stick). Click the image to see the mistletoe pattern.
But why mistletoe? And why this hood unit? Especially as this extractor hood retails at £429.00. And just who wants a mistletoe-themed kitchen - other than me, obviously.
I must say that I do rather like it but I
A quick update for those keen on knowing about druidic mistletoe events. The Mistletoe Foundation's mistletoe event for 2008 is unlikely to be in Tenbury Wells as part of the Festival/Auctions this time (so not like the last 3 years).
Instead the suggestion is that the event will be more like the 2004 Mistletoe Foundation event in the Forest of Dean (for info see the reviews on the MF site and/or my blog entries about that time).
More on this soon - here and on the MF website.
Off to Sheffield next week for a conference on Orchards and Groves: Their History, Ecology, Culture and Archaeology. It's at Sheffield Hallam University - and should be a good chance for the great range of people involved in traditional orchards to get together and compare notes - on what's going well, and badly, in traditional orchard conservation.
It's a complex and growing field, with loads of stuff going on (next month's Apple Day celebrations give a flavour, often literally, of some of the work) but there's still a lot more to be done. Traditional orchards of all sorts (not just Apples) need much more active protection and (this is most important!) active use if they are to survive. Protection doesn't, in itself, help - there is a real need to get the trees managed and the fruit used - these orchards are a key part of the UK's heritage in every sense - farming, history, landscape and biodiversity.
This is a mistletoe blog, not an orchards one - and I won't pretend to be an expert on orchards - browse around Common Ground's website and the National Orchard Forum for more on orchards themselves. But mistletoe does grow best on apple trees, and orchards and gardens are its favourite habitat (click on the graphs on the left for more info on this) - so I do keep a close watch on orchard affairs.
I'm speaking at the conference (programme here for those interested) on mistletoe - it's place in culture, history and orchards, and I'll be promoting the theme of mistletoe management I started up last year. I'll say more on this later this season but the key point is that Christmas mistletoe supply is closely linked to mistletoe growing in orchards - and neglect and/or misguided management is leading, ironically, to many older orchards getting overgrown with mistletoe - to the detriment of the host apple trees and ultimately the mistletoe too. Orchard mistletoe needs a lot more active management - and there is a real risk we'll lose it all if we don't sort this out soon...
For those looking to find out more about the Tenbury Wells Mistletoe Auctions and the Tenbury Wells Mistletoe Festival - which are what most of the current media enquiries are about (monthly magazines putting their December issues together) here are the key facts and dates as things stand:
First thing to remember, by the way, is that the Festival and the Auctions are not the same thing - they just happen at about the same time. The Mistletoe Festival is a relatively new creation, some 4 or 5 years old, established to celebrate Tenbury Wells' mistletoe heritage, at a time when continuation of the auctions seemed unlikely. The Auctions have continued so far, but as feared, they have already been forced to move location from the town centre, so the Festival is the only mistletoe event actually in Tenbury itself.
For 2008 the Auctions, run by Nick Champion, will be on 25th November, 2nd December and 9th December. These are, as is traditional, Tuesday morning events. Stock will be delivered on the preceding Monday afternoon. The Auctions are wholesale events - if you just want a few sprigs for your hallway this is not the event to come to - but if you want to see more mistletoe than you've ever seen in your life, it is definitely the place to come...
Location will be, as last year, at the sports ground at Little Hereford (nowhere near Hereford itself, just a few miles west of Tenbury - for a location map click here).
The Mistletoe Festival itself will be taking place on Saturday 6th December. I'm not directly involved this season, though I am still, by default, i/c the festival website.
But I don't yet know the programme - so can't tell you much yet about the plans for the day. Likely events include the Crowning of the Mistletoe Queen, street entertainment and mistletoe-based activities/stalls. And maybe the Mistletoe Ball in the evening. But you'll have to wait for another week or two for detailed news and programme. Mistletoe Day will be, as is now established by a long tradition stretching back, ooh, almost 5 years, on Monday 1st December. Not sure yet about events for that either.
Do come back soon for updates...
It's a long time since my last entry - but hey, mistletoe is a very seasonal thing you know. And I've been very busy on non-mistletoe stuff - a man can't live on mistletoe alone.
It was a good mistletoey late winter and spring - lots of mistletoe activity - walks, talks, sales of TEME mistletoe grow-kits, and reviewing mistletoe plantings in some key London locations - but it seems a bit late to describe all of that now. I didn't blog it at the time as I was rather pre-occupied with other matters.
But it's getting close to the new season now, and the enquiries are beginning to come in - mainly from the media, and from photographers wanting mistletoe for fashion shoots etc. Most of these have to be put off - as mistletoe in early-mid summer just doesn't look right - small green oval berries and semi-developed new leaves. Ok at a distance perhaps but not close-up.
So, it's probably time I finally updated the mistletoe website, in anticipation of the new season - and the various mistletoe initiatives (you'll read about them here first) that will be taking place.
But not today - I need to get a few things sorted out first....
Mistletoe Man
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