Arceuthobium americanum
species of plant
Arceuthobium americanum is a species of dwarf mistletoe known as American dwarf mistletoe and lodgepole-pine dwarf mistletoe. It is a common plant of western North America where it lives in high elevation pine forests. It is a parasitic plant which lives upon the Lodgepole Pine, particularly the subspecies Pinus contortus ssp. murrayana, the Tamarack Pine. This pine subspecies is most common in the Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada. The American dwarf mistletoe is a yellow-green coral-shaped structure above the surface of the tree's bark, while most of the parasite is beneath the bark. The seeds mature in late summer and disperse to nearby trees. This species has been found to explosively-disperse its seeds through thermogenesis.
The parasitic plant is dioecious, meaning that it has separate male and female parts. Studies of pine needles from infected trees have shown decreased starch content in the needles of infected trees.
The public source identifies “Arceuthobium americanum” as species of plant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Arceuthobium, americanum and species.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4785275. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arceuthobium americanum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.