Fire Mitigating Trees Killed By Mistletoe

Dwarf mistletoe is an invasive weed that needs tackling right away. The sooner you catch it, the more chance you have of saving the tree as a whole. The benefit is the mistletoe affects branches, so you can cut off the infested branches to save the rest of the tree.

How Mistletoe Kills Trees

Mistletoe is a parasitic plant. It will steal all the food and water going to the tree. This prevents the trees getting the nutrients going to the tree, leading to them dying.

The good news is mistletoe is slow moving unlike beetles. You have time to tackle the infestation without completely losing the trees. The problem is that the weed can end up spreading far away due to the way the seeds carry.

How the Seeds Spread

Mistletoe seeds spread in a couple of ways. Toward the end of the summer, the mistletoe will shoot its seeds out around 60ft from where it originally stands. This infests all the trees in that radius. If the mistletoe is left to become a problem, the seeds will infect the next 60ft of forest.

On top of that, the seeds are sticky. They get stuck to the feet of birds, spreading to various parts of the forests with them. It’s impossible to prevent this, so you need to tackle the infestations as they happen.

Do the Trees Need Removing?

Not all trees will need removing because of a mistletoe infestation. You’ll want to divide a tree into thirds and look at the signs of infestations in each of those thirds. Each third will need the following rating:
0 – When there is no infestation on any branch
1 – When less than half of the branches are infected
2 – When more than half of the branches are infected

If you get a combined score of 3 or more across all thirds, the tree will need to be removed. Anything lower than that and you can cut away the infected branches and preserve the rest of the tree. Once you cut the branch, the mistletoe dies and you don’t need to dispose of it in any special way.