When did the mistletoe family Loranthaceae become extinct in Tasmania? Review and conjecture

‘Mistletoe’ is the common name for a diverse group of hemi-parasitic shrublets that grow attached to and within the branches of trees and shrubs. Vidal-Russell and Nickrent (2008a) and Nickrent et al. (2010) infer that the mistletoe habit has evolved five times in the sandalwood order Santalales. The first of these clades is the family Misodendraceae, which is endemic to southern South America and whose species grow mainly on Nothofagus. The habit evolved three times within the Santalaceae – in the cosmopolitan tribe Visceae, which includes the ‘archetypal’ European Mistletoe Viscum album, in tropical American species of Santaleae that were formerly placed into a separate family, the Eremolepidaceae, and in the tropical tribe Amphorogyneae. The third clade comprises all members of the Loranthaceae except the early diverging genera Nuytsia and Atkinsonia. The family is restricted to the Southern Hemisphere except for a few genera growing north of the equator in the tropics and around the Mediterranean.