Among regular and failed experiments with plants, this year again an attempt will be made for the umpteenth time to cultivate mistletoe. Why? For no reason at all other than that all attempts have so far failed. And what will you do with the plant if it succeeds? Nothing. Apart from making a note of it here in case anyone else might like to do likewise. Anyway, taking advice from The Field Book of Country Queries (Pelham Books 1987), you need to keep the seed (i.e. hold on to the berries of mistletoe bought at Christmas) until May. According to this instruction, you press ripe berries into crevices or shallow notches made in the young bark of branches on the undersides near the crotch or base, where they stick because of the gluey nature of the berry. You could cut a flap of bark and tuck the berry under it, making sure that the bark sticks. You may feel like following the suggestion of the writer that it be secured by adhesive tape. If the experiment works, the plant-to-be will send its roots along under the bark - a very slow process, you are warned. Apple and hawthorn are said to be the best host trees, though poplar, lime, maple, rowan and others have been mentioned. First problem - to make sure that the berries are still in condition to be used when May comes around. They should be kept on the shoots and hung or laid in a place with a cool temperature.
You are warned that if the seed does take root, the growth is very slow. For that will take up to one year. It will be in its third year before it puts out a pair of leaves and in the fourth year gets into its stride by putting out branches.
There is a lot more sexuality woven into the story of the mistletoe than just kissing under it at Christmas. It has been seen as an aphrodisiac and women who wished to conceive would tie a sprig around their waists or wrists, according to English lore. And Richard Mabey in his great book Flora Britannica informs us that the kissing bit and all it implies is perhaps an indication of a darker past lingering in the folk memory. The inclusion of mistletoe in church decoration at Christmas was, at least up to about 1960, frowned on in many parishes, he writes.
England has its fair share of trees growing mistletoe, chiefly in orchard country. Irish orchards may well have some. Why not? Dig into the old herbalists, and there it gets too complicated. Shakespeare calls it "the baleful mistletoe". Enough.