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Arceuthobium cyanocarpum
A parasitic dwarf mistletoe that grows on high-elevation pines in the western United States, forming dense witches' brooms on its host. It is not grown as a garden plant; it lives only on living conifers such as limber pine.
Arceuthobium cyanocarpum, commonly known as limber pine dwarf mistletoe, is a species of parasitic plant in the sandalwood family, Santalaceae, sometimes instead placed in the viscaceous mistletoe family, Viscaceae. It is native to the western United States, where it grows at high elevations in the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin and, less commonly, in Oregon and California. There, it grows on and parasitizes conifers, primarily the limber pine (Pinus flexilis), whitebark pine (P. albicaulis), Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine (P. aristata), and Great Basin bristlecone pine (P. longaeva). The plant significantly impacts the health and vigor of its host, sometimes resulting in mortality, but also contributes to other species and to the normal functioning of forest ecology.
The native range of Arceuthobium cyanocarpum extends across much of western North America. Like its hosts, it is primarily a montane species, occurring at elevations of 1,600–3,100 m (5,249.3–10,170.6 ft). It is broadly distributed across Wyoming southward through the Front Range in Colorado, but populations are otherwise scattered across mountain ranges in Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and California. A. cyanocarpum is a common species in the Great Basin and the Rocky Mountains in the western United States, but is rather uncommon in Oregon and California. In Oregon, it is known from the Three Sisters Wilderness, Newberry National Volcanic Monument, and Crater Lake National Park. In northern California, it grows in the Warner Mountains and near Mount Shasta in the north and the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains as well as desert ranges to the east in southern California.
Fir dwarf mistletoe · American dwarf mistletoe · Apache dwarf mistletoe · Azores Dwarf Mistletoe · Southwestern white pine dwarf mistletoe · Sugar pine dwarf mistletoe · Western dwarf mistletoe · Pinyon dwarf mistletoe · Douglas-fir dwarf mistletoe · Huachuca Mountain dwarf mistletoe · Larch dwarf mistletoe · Coastal dwarf mistletoe
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Arceuthobium cyanocarpum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
