After meeting at Council House 2, Citizen Forester volunteers travelled with their survey leader either by car or by foot to visit trees throughout the city that have been inoculated with mistletoe seeds.

Using binoculars, the volunteers carried out a visual inspection of each tree to record if any baby mistletoe has grown.

No prior experience was required and the survey leaders provided instructions for tree inspections.

Mistletoe is an indigenous plant that grows in the canopy of trees. There are over 90 native species of mistletoe in Australia, with six indigenous to Melbourne.

Mistletoe partially relies on tree hosts to obtain water and nutrients (“hemiparasitic”) and therefore has traditionally been regarded as a pest. But in native forests, mistletoe acts as a small but powerful biodiversity amplifier (“keystone species”).

In 2012, when Professor David M. Watson and colleagues from Charles Sturt University (CSU)removed mistletoe from entire woodland patches, the number of woodland bird species dropped by 30 per cent compared to unaltered sites.

This is because mistletoe provides a range of resources for wildlife including highly nutritious pollen, nectar, fruit, and leaves; as well as cool, leafy places to hide and build nests.

The City of Melbourne recently commissioned Professor Watson and Melinda Cook from CSU to undertake an extensive literature review of Mistletoe Ecology in Urban areas worldwide to form the basis of our project.

The research found that virtually nothing is known about mistletoe ecology in urban systems because most research on mistletoe has been done in natural forests or agricultural landscapes. Our research and experimental trials is a world-first.

For example, the benefits of mistletoe in providing foliage microclimates as climate refuges and nesting locations for animals; the role of mistletoe in bioremediation, air pollution reduction and the mitigation of the urban heat island effect are totally unexplored.

As a result City of Melbourne Urban Forest and Ecology team used cherry pickers to experimentally plant mistletoe in selected Plane trees around the city.

Our aim is to see how many mistletoe plants establish, what factors affect their establishment, and to see if plantings can be used to bring more birds and butterflies to our parks and streets.

Planting mistletoe on established urban trees is a novel management tool that we hope will enhance the value of our natural infrastructure to wildlife and improve the overall ecological function of the City.

Want to learn even more about mistletoe? Check out the Watson Lab.