Post Library Visit To Lucy Park Contemplating Mistletoe Harvesting

This third Monday morning of the last month of 2023 I had to go to the library to refresh my reading material supply.

Time flies so fast, seems like I was just at the library, but it was over three weeks ago. Today's checked out books will be due to be returned next year, in early January.

Since I was in the neighborhood, after leaving the library I headed to Lucy Park for some nature communing via a fast walk around the former Lucy Park backwoods jungle.

I say former jungle because due to the leaves no longer being in many of the trees, it no longer looks like a green jungle.

The leaves may be gone, but some of the trees sport a different type of foliage.

Mistletoe.

Which is what you see being a parasite on the above tree.

It was years ago, in Arlington's Veterans Park, I learned those blobs of green were mistletoe. A pair of women were up on ladders, picking off the green blobs and putting them in a sack. I asked what they were doing and was told they were harvesting mistletoe.

I Googled to see if I could learn why the mistletoe parasite is known as the kissing plant....

Why is mistletoe the kissing plant?

In the Norse culture, the Mistletoe plant was a sign of love and peace. The story goes that the goddess, Figg lost her son, the god Baldur, to an arrow made of mistletoe. After his death, she vowed that Mistletoe would kiss anyone who passed beneath so long as it was never again used as a weapon.

Okay, that really did not make a lot of sense...