We have a few snowdrops in the garden. They are all a single-flowered, narrow-leaved variety, Galanthus Nivalis possibly....
This year a single snowdrop has appeared which is broad-leaved with quite a distinct flower head....a totally different variety, maybe Galanthus Allenii...
The other plant puzzling us is Mistletoe. The woods around here are full of the stuff but by this stage in the year there isn't a berry to be seen.
Yesterday whilst walking the Sentes de Fondoire, we spotted these fine specimens, absolutely laden with berries...
We had seen very few birds on our walk. In fact I'd been on the lookout for some to photograph but was out of luck. Does this explain the abundance of berries found on the mistletoe in these trees or are we, well, simply barking up the wrong tree? (sorry!)
4 comments:
Mistletoe is a plant of two sexes...
male and female plants on different trees...
Now, it is unlikely that all the berry less plants you see are all male...
some will be, though.
The others have probably been eaten by the large flocks of Fieldfares and Redwings that invade the region at this time of the year....
as well as Blackbirds, Song Thrushes....
and of course the Storm Cock itself...
the Mistle Thrush.
We see plenty of the last around here at all times of the year, but more in winter.
The mistletoe is a valuable food source for all berry eating birds in winter, along with hawthorn, ivy, dogwood and others.
I think your snowdrop is probably G. elwesii. I have some of them -- they like to be more open and drier than G. nivalis I think.
European Mistletoe has a sex bias towards female plants (around 65 - 70% of plants will be female) which is not affected by host -- which doesn't explain your observations, only compounds the mystery. Tim is probably right -- winter thrushes will strip the plants, and your plants with berries are lucky escapees. Recent research has shown that the Blackcap is also a big mistletoe berry eater (most birds apart from thrushes avoid it because of all the goo). Blackcaps have also been shown to be more effective at 'planting' the seeds so that they germinate. It seems the Mistle Thrush technique is actually a bit rubbish, and the seeds usually don't germinate after the Thrush treatment.
Susan, I couldn't make up my mind between G.elwesii and G.nivalis and unfortunately I plumped for the wrong one!
I think, like you, we'll go with Tim and we'll assume the plants full of berries are simply lucky escapees.
Thank you for all this information, Tim.
We, too, have Mistle Thrushes around here but we tend to see them only in the winter. Whether this is because they move on or because we simply haven't spotted them in the summer, I don't know.
Anything which provides a food source for the birds has to be welcome here. It might save us some pennies! We spend a small fortune feeding them with all manner of goodies.
Pity some of them don't distinguish between food we intend them to have and food from our potager which is certainly not intended for them!
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