Mistletoe / die Mistel

I must have missed the lesson in school about mistletoe. You know, the green plant that goes along with holly; the one Mommy and Santa are kissing under. I remember we had an artificial (plastic) piece of mistletoe that came on a package when I was young that we would hang in the doorway each year. It was green, just like holly, with white berries instead of red. I guess I've always just figured that there was a mistletoe bush just like there is a holly bush.

On Thanksgiving morning I first noticed mistletoe here without realizing that I had. I was on my way home through a park, finally having found celery after looking at three(!) grocery stores. A truck with man in cherry picker was working in the trees along the park, trimming the branches and cutting these round leafy balls out of the tree. The ground was littered with them, and I noticed that everyone who walked by would pick up at least one of these pieces of trimming and continue on. We were still wondering what we would be doing for Thanksgiving table decorations and it crossed my mind that we might want some greenery. The thought came and went, I didn't investigate what these leaves were, and we had a lovely table without them.

I didn't think about that greenery again until last week when a small piece of the same plant appeared on the door of our across-the-hall neighbors. It was wrapped with a green bow and looked festive, and then I started noticing the same thing being sold at stalls at the Christmas market. It wasn't until yesterday when I saw the pruning truck back in the same area by the park working on more trees, and the same scene of people scavenging the trimmings, that it occurred to me that I didn't have the foggiest idea where mistletoe comes from. Was this mistletoe?

As it turns out, it is indeed mistletoe. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that grows on tree branches and turns into a 'bush' ranging from two to five feet in diameter. It has poisonous berries, and an overinfestation of mistletoe can kill its host tree. Mistletoe grows wild in Salzburg, and now that the trees are bare, it's easy to see that it is everywhere. Perhaps I was better off not knowing about mistletoe, and living in my naive state of mistletoe bliss. Being a parasitic plant with poisonous berries whose name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word mistel or the German word Mist (depending on the source), both of which mean dung, mistletoe has kind of lost its mystical, magical Christmassy quality. In fact, it kind of seems like the Krampus of Christmas plants!