Loire Valley Countryside - Mystery Tree
As most of my friends know, I am easily entertained. Watching a fuzzy bumble bee working it's way around the garden is a sheer delight as is the every dusk event of the opening of the evening primrose flower, nature's version of time lapse photography.
We were totally perplexed as to this mystery tree scattered throughout the Loire Valley countryside. Some were totally consumed with the dark ball like growths and others only had one or two. Some new variety of twice blooming or leaf bearing arborite perhaps? Maybe a tree like our spring magnolia that first sports it's frothy pink blooms and then finishes the season out with the thickest, lushest green boughs in flora-dom.
The mystery was finally solved for us by simply asking our landlords Pam and Robert. The tree itself is any tree, the ball shaped growths are.............MISTLETOE!
A quick google search revealed that mistletoe in addition to being a symbol of Christmas cheer is a hemi-parasitic (OMG) shrub that nestles into most any tree branches and survives by sucking the nutrients out of that poor tree. Like alot of vines that get into trees, the mistletoe eventually kills the host tree. This little "spider-bot" is also found in many of the southern United States. Less visible, I think, because the southern forests tend to be thicker and wilder than in France making it harder to see this cannibalistic act occuring.
French trivia. I'm thoroughly put off of mistletoe now. You won't find any of it in my house this Christmas.
BEJOYFUL!
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