Common names include visco, tojí, tzavo, secapalo, injerto, and chili de espino in Spanish; aaxt in Seri.

The Cahuilla gathered the fruits November through April and boiled them into a paste with a sprinkle of wood ash added to the pot.

[3][6][7] Desert mistletoe plants, but not the berries, contain phoratoxins which can easily lead to death via slowed heart rate,[citation needed] increased blood pressure, convulsions, or cardiac arrest.

A dispersal survey[9] observed phainapepla's were most common bird eating mistletoe berries, followed by the Northern mockingbird and Gila woodpeckers.

Electrophoresis analysis has shown that isoenzymes differ significantly between P. californicum found on catclaw acacia (A. greggii) and honey mesquite (N. glandulosa), which are two common hosts that geographically co-concur[13].

This research suggests that mistletoe species growing on different hosts are experiencing some amount of genetic isolation, which may be contributing to their differentiation.

Internode length, berry color, and main/lateral shoot diameter ratio were shown to vary on average between mistletoes collected from catclaw acacia compared to honey mesquite[13].

Interestingly, there is also evidence against climate change[22] and geographic isolation[14] as drivers of host race evolution in both P. californicum and other mistletoe species.