Viscum album subsp. coloratum(mistletoe, "Yadorigi")
Japanese name: ヤドリギ（宿木） Scientific name:Viscum album subsp. coloratum
[Overview]
An evergreen shrub 30–80 cm tall, found from lowlands to mountains in the crowns of various deciduous trees such as Keyaki, Enoki, Mizunara and Sakura.
It photosynthesizes by itself, but it is a semi-parasitic plant that takes water and nutrients from the tree it parasitizes.
The branches fork into two or three many times, grow by one node per year, and form a rounded shape.
The stem is green.
Leaves are simple, borne in opposite pairs at the branch tips like a two-bladed propeller; they are oblanceolate, 2–8 cm long and 0.5–1 cm wide, with rounded tips, and are leathery and thick.
Three thick veins are conspicuous on the leaf.
The leaf margin is entire.
The plant is dioecious.
Both male and female flowers are small and yellow, borne 1–3 between the leaves at the branch tips.
The fruit is spherical, about 8 mm in diameter, and ripens to a translucent pale yellow or reddish orange.
Birds eat the fruit, but because the flesh is sticky they wipe it off against branches, and this is how the seeds are dispersed.
[Notes]
The form with yellow fruit is distinguished as Yadorigi, and the form with reddish-orange fruit as Akami-yadorigi.
