Mistletoe action plan

Aims
1. To ensure the conservation, enhancement and greater awareness of London's mistletoe for current and future generations.
2. To ensure that this cultural emblem is more widely recognised as a London species.



Mistletoe (Viscum album) was included in the London Biodiversity Audit on the basis of its rarity, cultural value and ease of monitoring. Though London is outside its stronghold areas in the south-west Midlands, the species has many cultural links to the capital. It may never have been very common here, but it has a long history in herbal medicine and seasonal traditions. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant of deciduous trees that produces milk-white berries.

The species is scarce in the Greater London area. Most mistletoe in London today grows in man-made habitats - little suitable natural habitat occurs - and the vast majority of London records are from trees in parks and gardens. Elsewhere in the country the plant also grows on trees in orchards, hedgerows, churchyards, cemeteries and linear features such as watersides and roadsides. London's principle stronghold seems to be in the Bushy Park and Hampton Court areas of Richmond, and a thriving colony around Myddelton House and Forty Hall in Enfield.

Contact
The contact for this species in the present absence of a Lead is Jonathan Briggs.
Jonathan Briggs
National Mistletoe Survey Co-ordinator
46 Arrowsmith Drive
Stonehouse
Glos GL10 2QR

Email: [email protected]