Australian Mistletoe Propagation

An experiment by David Nelson

Day 6 - 5-12-02 I decided to put this page together, to provide some information and hopefully encourage potential mistletoe-growers out there. Now for some background. I collected some mistletoe seeds from Olinda - near Kandos and Rylestone - north of Lithgow and Bathurst sort of area. I think that these seeds were an Amyema species (Note: Santalales: Loranthaceae: Amyema . I also collected some seeds from Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. This species may have been Amyema pendulum - but I couldn't really see much - just red flowers - as we were deep in the clouds. Seeds were collected from the ground (blackheath and olinda) or the plants (olinda only) on 28-11-02. So far, the only ones that I've planted in my garden are the blackheath seeds - the others I have planted on Eucalypts nearby, and haven't been taking photos of. Okay, cut to the chase... (cue the dreamy music...)

Day 1: 30-11-02
Damn - I forgot to take piccies of the seeds before I squeezed them... Ah well.
Today I planted the 9 seeds that I collected from Blackheath. I planted:
4 seeds on a young Eucalyptus
3 seeds on a large Angophora costata, Sydney Red-Gum.
1 seed on an Acacia elata, Cedar Wattle.
1 seed on an Stringybark. (I removed the bark to some extent where I planted it)

My main hope is that one of the four on the Euc establish. The ones on the Angophora were a fairly serious attempt, but the other two were just for a lark, I didn't expect the Acacia to be the 'right' sort of tree for the job, and thought the stringy bark would block the mistletoe's roots.
My techinique for planting was to squeeze the seed out of its 'jacket', and deposit the very sticky seed on the bark of the host. The seed sometimes needed to be rolled around on the bark before it got a good hold.
As I said, these seeds were collected from the ground - some were past their best and brownish.

I took some photos soon after planting.

A seed on the Euc. You can see the green haustorium under the white jelly-stuff.	A seed on the Angophora. You can see that it has already germinated - I suppose that this happens to seeds if they fall to the ground. This guy has a head-start on all the others.
The seed on the Acacia. Interesting to see two haustoria.	In this seed, the haustorium is well formed, but, constrained by the seed case, has curved around. I predicted at this time that this seed was doomed.

You can see the discoloration of the jelly-stuff in the older seeds.

>>Next Page>>