Phoradendron californicum

      

Phoradendron californicum (desert mistletoe, mesquite mistletoe) ( )

Viscaceae

• The leafless green stems bear numerous small white or reddish translucent berries. Food: when growing on certain legumes (catclaw, ironwood, or mesquite) the fruit of desert mistletoe was eaten. However, it was said to be bitter when growing on other hosts, e.g., palo verde and condalia. The fruit was considered ripe and harvestable when it turned "glassy". A common method of harvesting the fruit was to knock it off the tree onto a blanket. The berries were often fed to young children. Medicine: mistletoe tea was taken as a remedy for illness "inside the body". Tea made from the stems and leaves of mistletoe growing on creosote bush (P. diguetianum) was taken to cure diarrhea and to help a woman during childbirth. Oral Tradition: sometime in the mid-nineteenth century a group of Seri men went on a killing spree, involving both Seri and non-Seri victims. They then fled and lived in a cave on a mountain north of Hermosillo. They sometimes returned to raid their own people on the coast. On one such trip one of the men kidnapped a Seri girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old. He took her to the cave and tied her up when he went out. One of the other men release her, gave her water, and told her to go home. She made it back the coast-a distance of some 100 km. She told her people that at night she was afraid to sleep even once on the found or in a cave. Each day as evening drew near she looked for a large patch of mistletoe. She climbed up into it, worked her way into the mistletoe, and slept in it. "People of the Desert and Sea, Ethnobotany of the Seri Indians".