Forest Service Isn’t Festive About Mistletoe : Environment: Officials plan to eradicate a cousin of the traditional Christmas variety. It’s strangling trees on Pine Mountain.

At a time when mistletoe sprigs tied with red ribbon are beginning to appear in grocery stores and Christmas shops, the U.S. Forest Service is launching a campaign to eradicate mistletoe from the forest.

But true mistletoe, with its broad, furry leaves and the tradition of kissing beneath a suspended bunch, is not the target of this eradication campaign.

Instead, it’s a cousin of traditional Christmas mistletoe, known as the spiny-leafed dwarf mistletoe, which is strangling the Jeffrey pines on top of Pine Mountain.

The parasitic plant is so pervasive that foresters say they must take swift action to avoid losing a 200-acre stand of trees at Pine Mountain.

“If we let it go any longer, all the trees up there will die and it will be Bald Mountain instead of Pine Mountain,” said Terry Austin, resources forester with the Los Padres National Forest.

The U.S. Forest Service is developing a plan to eradicate the dwarf mistletoe and is asking for comments from any interested parties.

Eradication measures will probably include pruning affected branches and, in some cases, removing infected trees. No chemical treatment is planned.

The felled trees would be replaced with sugar pines and white fir, native species that are not susceptible to mistletoe infestation, Austin said.

The plan is to attack the parasite in three 20-acre stands near Pine Mountain Campground.

“That’s our most popular campground because it’s a real forest,” Austin said of the site, which is covered with 100-foot-tall pines and affords ocean views. “People can enjoy the view up there and still be in the trees and enjoy the smells of the forest.”

Austin is in the process of tagging all of the trees, ranking them by degree of infection and the type of treatment they will need. She said people, possibly misguided campers fearing all marked trees would be cut down, have been removing the tags and making her job more difficult.

“I have tagged 580 trees so far and 75 of them were taken down,” she said.

Rick Burgess, a board member of the Channel Islands branch of the California Native Plant Society, said he supports the Forest Service’s efforts to eradicate the pesky mistletoe.

“As long as they are very selective and they don’t remove too many trees, that might be an effective way of controlling the mistletoe,” he said.

Both true mistletoe, which attacks hardwoods such as oak, and the dwarf variety that attacks pines and other conifers, are naturally occurring forest parasites, Burgess said.

“But if they get out of hand or a tree gets stressed (from drought or disease), it can be a real problem,” he said.

Austin said the drought years of the late 1980s and early ‘90s allowed a true or Christmas mistletoe to become firmly embedded in the cottonwoods and willows around Lion Campground in Rose Valley.

There were a lot of broken limbs and weakened trees in the area. She has since tagged all of those trees as well and has tracked their recovery.

“We did some pruning and some tree removal there and, with the rains, they seem to be coming back,” Austin said. “But it’s much more urgent at Pine Mountain because if they go untreated, they will die.”

Both types of mistletoe are parasitic. But unlike true mistletoe, dwarf mistletoe depends almost entirely on its host tree for nourishment. It is thus more harmful to the host, causing affected branches to swell and break, slowly sapping the tree of life.

Dwarf mistletoe can also attach directly to the trunk and cause the tree to swell and eventually die.

Dwarf mistletoe spreads quickly as the female of the species produces berries. As the berries swell with water, the pressure causes them to burst, spitting out sticky seeds that can travel 30 or 40 feet.

“Just imagine if the wind is blowing how far those seeds could travel,” Austin said. “With their sticky coating, those seeds stick wherever they land. And once a tree is heavily infected at its crown, it usually dies within 15 years.”

The natural course of lightning-caused fires in the forest would probably eventually take care of the problem, Austin said. “But we don’t allow campgrounds to burn,” she said.

“People may be alarmed that we’re going to be cutting down trees up there,” Austin said. “But once they understand that we are trying to save the trees for the future, we hope they will understand.”