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Growing Mistletoe Without Soil: The Strange 1991 Hydroculture Patent · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there, and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Udreema Ltd.
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  We make novel fertilizers, interesting biostimulants, and organic biopesticides.
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  And today I wanted to talk about an interesting patent I'd found.
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  Patent, you can say it a few ways, can't you?
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  Patent, patent. And it's to do with mistletoe. So mistletoe is not a hydroponic crop currently.
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  It is a parasitic plant, or what's termed a hemiparasitic or semi-parasitic
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  plant, in that it feeds off trees.
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  So normally it grows in orchards or on wild trees, certainly here in the UK,
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  the European species viscum album, the white mistletoe.
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  And it's very common in apple
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  orchards around the southeast herefordshire
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  way and lots of trees like ash trees around
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  here in the midlands doesn't grow very well further north in england anyway
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  so yeah it it takes mainly the water and a bit of nutrition well all of it's
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  mineral nutrition from the host plants it lives in the canopy so it's got no roots and it invades the,
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  vascular tissue of the of the host tree
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  and then it as i said on a previous episode when
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  i was talking about rafflesia the largest flower in the world mistletoe seeds
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  the fruits are very very sticky and so at birds like the mistletoe thrush which
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  is a species of thrush that is especially evolved with mistletoe they eat the
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  seeds this the fruit and then they.
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  Poo out the seeds and along with that
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  the goo that surrounded the this the
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  seed in the fruit that irritates the bird
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  and it sticks to the bird's anus and
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  it makes them push the seed into
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  the the the branch of the trees that they're set
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  on they're roosting him so it irritates them
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  so they're they're rubbing the seed down into
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  the bark and that's what causes the attachment of the plant
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  it's a very green plant it uses lots and lots of
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  water so it's stealing water so it
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  doesn't care about the health of the tree very much that's how
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  it's evolved and so they're very high photosynthetic rates
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  and they form bushes and then the reason
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  they're tolerated in orchards is because you can sell them for
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  a high price and especially at christmas because obviously
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  you kiss under the mistletoe and people buy mistletoe from florists
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  and supermarkets and places like that it's actually
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  a poisonous plant highly poisonous so don't eat
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  it but there is one village i think somewhere like
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  tutbury wells or something like that somewhere very very english
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  where you'd find ellen de generis in
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  the cotswolds where every year in about november they have a big mistletoe market
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  and all the farmers all the orchard growers sell their mistletoe at this one
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  particular town and it's a bit of a popular local event so um all the celebrities
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  that live in the Cotswolds where they're all coming like J.D.
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  Vance has recently been to the Cotswolds and maybe they'll go to the mistletoe market.
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  But this patent that I've found is looking at hydroponic cultivation.
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  So the title of it is, Methods of Cultivating Mistletoe in Horticulture,
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  Involving the Use of Hydroculture Baths Containing Sap of Host Plant Into Which
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  Sprigs of Freshly Cut Mistletoe Are Placed.
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  And it's a worldwide patent that was applied for in 1991.
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  So it's very old and probably out of date now. So you could use the techniques
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  in this patent without infringing it, without being sued by the inventor.
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  The inventor is Gunther Mayer
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  and he is German and let's look
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  into it and find out more about this patent or
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  patent depending on what you say so there isn't actually that.
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  Much information on this patent it says it
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  talks about putting the plants in a bath of sap
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  from the juice and juice vascular.
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  Juice from the plants it doesn't say how the vascular juice.
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  Is extracted now it could be you just get the plant.
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  And you whiz it up in a blender and that
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  could be juice that's how we think of juice but vascular juice
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  sort of implies that it's sap and
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  that needs to be extracted with something like a pressure bomb where you pull it
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  out under pressure and then the
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  only other thing it talks about is carbon dioxide use of
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  carbon dioxide there's no images there's no diagrams
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  which makes it very weird that it was granted
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  this patent because it just says oh here's
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  a method for propagating mistletoe and
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  it involves sticking plants in hydroponic vats
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  containing sap so very strange doesn't say
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  how the juice will be preserved because otherwise presumably it would just
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  go off within a matter of hours or days and
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  yeah Gunther filed the patent
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  in 91 and then it was withdrawn in 94 because
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  he didn't pay his fees and so
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  yeah he's got another patent which is for using lasers to
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  cut grass lawns which is interesting
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  a strange one that one as well not seen
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  many laser that was from 2007 so there's a
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  big gap between him filing the patents for the two of them and then it cites
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  another patent which is about the cultivation of mistletoe and other hydroponic
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  plants and this one's even more bizarre and even more simple this one just says
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  that this is a patent for propagation of.
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  Parasitic plants and involves putting seeds on a host
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  plant and then taking the cuttings from that
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  host plant and then propagating them that's it just
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  putting seeds on and was that one
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  was granted a patent as well so basically very very
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  low bar for getting patents for cultivating
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  parasitic plants so that second patent was by
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  some danish researchers from the university of
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  copenhagen in 2002 and yeah again
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  a really really bizarre patent so yeah
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  it turns out you can grow mistletoe hydroponically
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  if we believe gunter did this or not apparently according
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  to file a patent you have to have actually invented the thing you can't just
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  come up with an idea it has to have been possible so in theory gunter had to
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  have produced mistletoe plants successfully using this technique of using the
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  juice of the host plant as the hydroponic fertigation solution.
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  I would say it's highly unlikely that you could recreate this,
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  but maybe you should give it a go and see.
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  If you have got an outlet for mistletoe, it's quite an expensive crop,
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  then perhaps you could have a play around with it.
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  The other plant, hemiparasitic plant.
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  That is a commercial crop is sandalwood
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  and sandalwood is tropical
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  isn't it i think it grows in
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  let's have a look some species are suffering from
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  over harvesting in the past so yeah if we if
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  if there's a shortage of sandalwood then
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  this could be another good crop to grow sandalwood oil prices
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  have rose to three thousand dollars
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  per liter in 2017 so it's.
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  An expensive crop sandalwood so yeah it
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  grows on the santolum tree and it's
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  native to southeast asia east timor
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  papua new guinea places like that certain islands
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  in japan but if you're growing it hydroponic you could grow
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  it anywhere in the world so maybe sandalwood's a good crop you
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  could consider growing one disadvantage of growing
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  hydroponic sandalwood is that it takes
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  40 years for the crops to become
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  mature enough to be harvested of their oil with 80 being
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  the preferred age 80 years before
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  you get a crop and so anyone who plants the sand sandalwood
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  plantation will never ever see the profits so
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  you have to be believe in your family that they are
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  and your your people that
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  you invest in your business are going to take it forward because 80 years however
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  that is mad 30 years is considered inferior for sandalwood so maybe not hydroponics
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  maybe some sort of hybrid system where you grow the sandalwood saplings in the
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  juice of the host plants and then transplant them out afterwards would be a good one.
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  So yeah, if you have ever grown a parasitic plant hydroponically,
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  then please do let me know, because I'd be really interested in finding out.
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  It could be a non-crop species like broomrape, or a ghost orchid, or something like this.
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  Then yeah, it'd be really interesting to know that. That's been Hydroponics Daily for today.
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  How to hydroponically grow parasitic plants, such as mistletoe and sandalwood.
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  If you found this interesting, then please leave an Apple podcast
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  review it would mean the world to me because it would shoot this podcast
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  up the apple podcast charts and that's all
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  i care about vanity and things like that no it's uh just so we can grow the
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  podcast and more people learn about hydroponics and the fascinating world of
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  growing plants in indoors without soil or outdoors without soil all right that's
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  been enough for today i'll see you again tomorrow goodbye.