This is only a mild paraphrase of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 35, “plants” rather than “men”. It is a reminder that every plant has a mixed natural history, everything from a siting that works, another that does not: rhododendrons thrive in organic, acid soils in northeast Ohio, not so much in some southwest Ohio plantscapes of pH 7.5. With that in mind, every plant has its place and every plant has its own haunted house, so let’s look at another edition of Horticultural Horrors and Plant Pathologies.
True Mistletoes. (Phoradendron species) Not long ago, I wrote of dwarf mistletoes (Arceuthobium species), flowering parasitic plants that attached to junipers in the Utah desert, feeding on the hard-earned carbohydrates produced through photosynthesis in the juniper foliage. Recently, at a program on a horse farm in Kentucky, we espied a different type of mistletoe in the black walnut trees.