Spouses and sweethearts enjoy the holiday tradition of affectionate kisses under the green, leafy sprigs of Yuletide mistletoe. Wild songbirds also have a tendency to actively seek out this native flora, but it is because the mistletoe fruits are highly favored food items.

One might wonder what is the wild plant’s reaction to all of this. After all, the birds are gobbling up their offspring (so to speak).

The surprising thing about mistletoe plants is that they intentionally invite birds to come hither. Mistletoe fruits are covered in a very sticky coating; many of the uneaten fruits adhere to the birds’ faces when they fly away to another tree limb perch.

As you might well imagine, having a bunch of sticky seeds stuck onto their faces is no end of annoyance for the fruit-eating birds. If the birds’ stomachs are already full of food, the birds will wipe the sticky seeds off onto the perch upon which they are sitting. That, of course, was the intention of the mistletoe plants all along; it is the seed dispersal technique that the ingenious (devious?) mistletoe plants had envisioned beforehand.

Who among us has accused wild plants of being unintelligent? If it was you, think again.

Neil Garrison was the longtime naturalist at a central Oklahoma nature center. His email is atlatlgarrison@hotmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Mistletoe traditional Christmas decor; plant spreads with birds’ help