DEVELOPMENT OF NONDESTRUCTIVE AGE INDEXES FOR 3 NEW-ZEALAND LORANTHACEOUS MISTLETOES

We investigated a variety of non-destructive measures as potential pre dictors of mistletoe age as determined anatomically for three mistleto e species, Alepis flavida, Ileostylus micranthus, and Tupeia antarctic a. We show that the diameter of the host stem immediately below the ha ustorial attachment is consistently the best predictor of mistletoe ag e with R-2 values of 0.622-0.849. We suggest that host branch diameter can be used in future studies of mistletoe population dynamics and ot her age-dependent aspects of mistletoe ecology without destructively s ampling mistletoe populations as it provides a good indication of mist letoe age for the mistletoe-host pairs we studied. However, these rela tionships have been derived from single sites and hosts for each mistl etoe species, suggesting caution when applying them at other sites or to other hosts.