In the Garden: The Last Things

The last woody plant to hold its leaves as the garden goes to sleep in December is the oakleaf hydrangea. I saw it in the late afternoon sunlight and wanted to write an ode to a leaf. 

The last shrubs to bloom in the garden are the camellias. In my yard they're the size of small trees. I believe the one below is the variety (appropriately named) "Yuletide." The flowers are fragrant, unlike those of most camellias.

The flowers have never clustered so thickly.

I don't know the name of the camellia below, but it blooms on and off throughout the winter. If it's cold, its blossoms freeze and turn brown, but new buds emerge and bloom. 

It has lovely rose-like blooms. 

I thank the unknown gardener who planted it.

A white camellia in the sasanqua family also blooms prolifically.

This is the camellia tree that the cardinals nested in last spring. 

Last but not least, here is some low-growing mistletoe I saw on a tree on the golf course last week. It's rare to see mistletoe growing at eye level, though I did get lucky one year in finding sprigs with berries growing low. 

Did anyone notice the difference between the first photos on this post and the last two? :) 

Mistletoe Joy

Sometimes you really do find what you’re looking for when you least expect it. I had been disappointed so far this Christmas season in the search for mistletoe. The Hogans didn’t have it this year at their holiday decoration party. On walks I’d seen it high in old oaks in the woods, tantalizing but 70 feet out of reach.

So yesterday I was surprised and delighted when I parked my car outside the post office in Chapel Hill and saw mistletoe growing just above eye level on an old fruit tree. I couldn’t believe my luck.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. Should I break off a sprig immediately, or could I wait until after mailing the package? I didn’t want to seem greedy. A middle-aged woman sat in the passenger seat of the car next to mine staring ahead, oblivious to the mistletoe glistening in the sun.

Mistletoe, Phoradendron leucarpum, is a parasite that grows on old trees, mainly oaks. Birds spread mistletoe when they pick up the sticky white berries and inadvertently attach them to tree limbs.

How could mistletoe dotted with white berries remain within easy reach during Christmas season outside of the post office, all places? Some women have an eye for jewelry, some men for cars. I look at plants and the natural setting – and now nature was giving me a gift.

Indeed, the ancients believed that encountering mistletoe was reason for celebration. We know mistletoe best for the tradition, dating back to at least sixteenth century England, of hanging a sprig in a doorway underneath which a man and woman greet with a kiss. Mistletoe was revered in ancient times, when the appearance of living green on barren tree branches in the dark days near the winter solstice seemed miraculous.

The Greek Pliny the Elder, writing in the decades before Christ, documented the belief that mistletoe contained the living spirit of the sacred oak tree. And the Druids worshiped mistletoe, believing it to have mystical properties.

Finding the mistletoe made me feel like a small child on Christmas morning. I couldn’t wait to get home and string it up in the kitchen, a lovely reminder to kiss my husband.