Mistletoe
Mistletoe grows high in tree crowns because birds plant it: they eat the sticky berries and leave the seeds on branches. Austrian lore promised sweet sleep and beautiful dreams to anyone who laid a sprig at the bedroom door.
What it may mean
No mistletoe chooses its tree. A bird eats the white berries in winter, and the seeds, wrapped in a glue so sticky that birds wipe them off their beaks or pass them in droppings, end up stuck to some particular branch of some particular tree. There the seed sends a root into the bark and starts to grow. It might be a poplar by a road, an apple in an orchard or an oak in a park. Years later a green ball hangs in the bare crown, alive all winter while the tree around it sleeps. People often begin somewhere they did not pick: a town their parents moved to, a school assigned by address, a job taken because it was there. Mistletoe makes no fuss about it. It roots where it lands and stays green. A sprig over a door in December can hold that thought as well as any other.
Depending on how you saw it
Laid at a bedroom door in Austria
Laid at the threshold of a bedroom, the Austrian sprig was meant to guard the night and send good dreams. What do you keep near your bed to help a night go well?
The plant that killed Baldur
In Norse myth, Baldur was protected against everything that grew from the earth, and the one thing overlooked, the mistletoe, became the weapon that killed him. Which small, harmless-looking thing turned out to be the one nobody had guarded against?
Clumps in a winter tree
Once the leaves fall, mistletoe clumps show up as dark green balls in poplars, lindens and apple trees, invisible all summer. Which part of your life only shows clearly once everything around it has gone bare?
Why it happens in nature
Mistletoe is a partly parasitic evergreen that draws water and minerals from its host tree while making its own food from sunlight. Birds eat its white berries and leave the sticky seeds on branches, by wiping their beaks or in their droppings, and the seeds root into the bark. That is why mistletoe grows high in tree crowns rather than in the ground.
What folk beliefs say
Austria
In Austria, if a sprig of mistletoe is laid at the bedroom door, a 1903 collection says, the sleepers will have sweet sleep and beautiful dreams.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 818. View the page
Germany (Holstein)
In Holstein, the people called mistletoe the branch of specters and thought it gave good fortune in hunting.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 818. View the page
Scandinavia (Norse myth)
Mistletoe was held in abhorrence by the Scandinavians, the same collection says, as the agent used by the murderer of Baldur the Beautiful, the god of sunshine and happiness.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 818. View the page
England
English maidens believed that if they did not receive at least one kiss under the mistletoe on Christmas Day, they would not marry for a year.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 3 (1903), vol. 3, p. 1504 (file v 3). View the page
To reflect on
Where did chance plant you, and how have you managed to stay green there?