Mistletoe

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Mistletoe

Kissing under the Mistletoe is a custom dating back to Pagan times, when the mistletoe was associated with fertility and a kiss beneath it was supposed to lead to marriage and babies, but just what is this plant?

Well, it's actually a parasite of the loranthaceae family, which grows mainly on apple trees, but will grow on poplars, pear trees, pines and firs, willows and hawthorns and, very rarely, on oaks. When it is found growing on oaks it is treated with special reverence by the Druidic tradition as the oak is a sacred tree. Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History" published in AD77 noted that the Druids would cut the plant down with a golden sickle and catch it on a white mantle. Sometimes the plant was associated with ritual murder, such as that of the young man whose naked body was found in 1984 in the peat bog at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, before he was killed over 2300 years ago he had eaten mistletoe.

There are two main families of mistletoe, distinguished by their white or red berries. The white ones are significantly more toxic and I have never seen the red ones. The white one, or Viscum album or alba, is used in medicine despite its toxicity. In the past the juice of the berries was smeared on an affected part of the body as a relief for strains, sores, impetigo, dandruff, warts and ringworm; an infusion was drunk as a medicine for epilepsy, colds, fevers, syphilis, gout and worms. It was also considered particularly potent as an infertility remedy for women and cows. However, these days the berries are not used, and only the young leafy twigs are collected and mostly just the leaves are used.

The leaves contain viscotoxin, a cardio-active polypeptide (a protein that's used for the heart), triterpenoid saponins, choline, histamine and anti-tumour proteins, and has been used for many years as a treatment for nerves, hypotension, slowing the heart, and now it is thought it has a high value against tumours. Research has been carried out in Germany with mistletoe lectin on cancer patients and it not only kills cancer cells, but it also appears to stimulate the immunosystem.

NB: YOU ARE NOT ADVISED TO TAKE MISTLETOE WITHOUT HERBALIST OR MEDICAL SUPERVISION.

Mistletoe was a bit of a secretive beast and its structure was only discovered after 6 years of work in 1995 by Dr Rex Palmer and Edel Sweeney, crystallographers at London, who carried out work, bombing the mistletoe lectin crystals with X-rays generated by electrons travelling close to the speed of light, at a research lab in Cheshire. They discovered that the toxin consists of two pairs of large proteins, each pair made up of a sugar-binding part which can attach itself to cell walls and an enzyme part, which breaks down essential proteins as they are being made inside the cell.

Technology can now genetically engineer mistletoe lectin and scientists are trying to attach the toxic enzyme to an antibody that seeks out cancer cells. It also has a role in controlling white blood cells in order to prevent the rejection of organ transplants. The thing that always puzzles me is how the hell did they know about the virtues of plants years ago? If you want to grow your own mistletoe you can do so, provided you use a tree of the same variety as the one you picked the berry from, i.e. if you take the berry from mistletoe growing on an apple tree, you have to put it on an apple tree. You make a cut into the sap of the tree, preferably in the 'v' of a branch and replace the bark, and then wait. Normally the seed should grow into a mistletoe and then watch it spread. Remember to wash your hands thoroughly after playing with mistletoe berries as they are very toxic.

Julia Renshaw

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