For the past two years, we have worked with the citizens of Christchurch to establish 500 native green mistletoe/pirita plants and in doing so, boost biodiversity by attracting native birds and insects back to our urban environment.
After seeding their mistletoe plants, volunteers kept us up to date with their plant's progress via online surveys. From these surveys we were able to learn more about how mistletoe are established and how close to our goal we are.
Timeline
In 2016, the project was started as student research, funded by the Friends of the Christchurch Botanic Gardens and the University of Canterbury. Mistletoe was seeded throughout the Botanic Gardens, and 33 plants are now established.
In 2017, mistletoe was seeded throughout 300 volunteer's backyards. 350 plants germinated from these seeds.
In 2018, mistletoe was again seeded throughout another 300 backyards and we now have a total of 493 germinated mistletoe plants.