Mistletoe plentiful in state; not always
LR once nearly had to kiss it goodbye
At Tipton & Hurst florists, sales are brisk for a certain perennial, berry-covered, evergreen plant.
“This year has been extremely busy for mistletoe,” said Freda Rice, the company’s floral distribution manager. “I ordered it twice. It just is in high demand.”
The mistletoe twigs were shipped from California.
These days, commercially, “it’s hard to find,” she said.
But it’s visible in Little Rock, in the treetops, at this time of year. It thrives in Northwest Arkansas, too.
“It’s pretty much statewide,” said Gerald Klingaman, operations director of the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville. “It tends to be more common in and around rivers, but you’ll find it in all corners of the state.”
There are numerous types.
Eastern mistletoe, also known as Phoradendron leu-
carpum, is a native plant here.
It is also parasitic. Sinking rootlike tentacles into its host trees or shrubs, it slowly drains the host of the water and nutrients it needs to thrive.
Its sticky white berries are aesthetically pleasing, but “you don’t want to eat them,” said Klingaman, an emeritus professor of horticulture at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
They poison people, but not birds, which spread them from tree to tree.
The tradition of kissing beneath the mistletoe was borrowed from the British isles, where it has long been observed.
A German visitor to London, writing in 1860, noted that “a mistletoe-bough is suspended from the ceiling of every room, and happy the man who meets a pretty girl beneath it.”
An 1867 book by Washington Irving, Christmas in England, said the practice was longstanding and that “mistletoe is still hung up in farmhouses and kitchens at Christmas.”
“The young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush,” Irving wrote. “When the berries are all plucked, the privilege ceases.”
A century ago, locally grown mistletoe was a Christmas staple and a point of pride.
On Dec. 19, 1906, the Arkansas Democrat wrote that “no state of the Union, probably, has a greater supply of holly and mistletoe,” boasting that the “evergreens of romance are found in the greatest abundance within a few miles of Little Rock.”
While the holly “lacks the tenacity of its Eastern kin,” the “Arkansas mistletoe defies competition,” the Arkansas Gazette boasted in its Dec. 19, 1909, edition.
The quality that year had been “unusually good,” and demand was high, the newspaper noted on Dec. 22 of that year.
“One Main street florist establishment yesterday packed and shipped 12 barrels, two boxes and one hamper of Arkansas mistletoe,” the Gazette article noted.
At the peak of its popularity, there was even reportedly a shortage of berry-bearing twigs. “Mistletoe supply nearly exhausted,” a Dec. 23, 1910, Gazette headline warned in all capital letters.
“Those who are familiar with the forest and country immediately surrounding the city say that the local mistletoe supply is almost exhausted, and that the principal part of that which remains is located in the tops of very high trees where it cannot be easily obtained,” the newspaper noted.
Over the years, entrepreneurial Arkansans harvested the plant for fun and profit, shipping it far and wide.
“It’s going to be a real Christmas in Wichita,” a Kansas newspaper promised in 1919. “There will be not only trees — if you get your order in early — but there will be plenty of Oklahoma and Arkansas mistletoe. … Because of the good supply of mistletoe on hand, local dealers say they look for a great increase in engagements and marriages immediately following Christmas.”
At Bur’s grocery store in Green Bay, Wis., holiday shoppers in 1927 were promised “a small spray of genuine Arkansas Mistletoe … free with every purchase,” with the last four words emphasized in all capital letters.
Arkansas mistletoe remained in demand at least into the 1950s. A railway express agent in Ozark estimated total shipments of 5,000 pounds from
his station in 1954.
Made-in-Ozark mistletoe corsages could be purchased at Gimbels department store in New York City and “in Woolworth stores from coast to coast,” a reporter noted at the time.
More recently, the Texas hill country has been an epicenter for mistletoe collection and distribution.
Tiemann’s Holiday Mistletoe once dominated the market there, but it suspended operations after nearly six decades in business.
“The drought of 2011 killed it,” the person answering calls explained. “We haven’t had enough to ship in several years.”
In other areas, mistletoe continues to flourish.
Thanks to the Internet, budding mistletoe peddlers can now peddle their holiday wares to the entire nation.
Closer to home, Brenda Francis of Little Rock is offering mistletoe arrangements for $3 apiece on Facebook Marketplace.
“I started selling it because I really needed extra money for
Christmas,” she said via email.
There are various ways to collect the plants.
“Most ‘country people’ would tell you that you shoot it out of a tree. That’s not how I got mine. My husband actually climbed a tree for me and cut some.”
Once it was safely on the ground, she got to work.
“I personally made it look nice by adding some holly to it, as well as some red and green ribbon,” she said via email. “The few people that bought some said that it was beautiful and that they loved it!”
With Dec. 25 drawing close, she had made roughly 10 sales, but she wasn’t discouraged.
“I plan on selling it during the holidays for years to come,”
she said.
Sarah Gamble of Searcy also sees a market with room for growth.
The 21-year-old Harding University student enjoys hunting for the parasitic plant.
“I’ve been harvesting mistletoe every year with my family ever since I was strong enough to aim a Ruger .22 rifle,” she said in an email.
One year, her mother fell from a tree while gathering mistletoe and ruptured her spleen. This year, her father whacked it down with a machete, she noted.
She’s convinced that the plant could be profitable again.
“I’m excited to see how far Arkansas mistletoe could go,” she added.