Flowers and their friends

by Margaret Warner Morley

They think of little but how to get something to eat out of other people.

They begin their shameful career from the very seed. Instead of sprouting in the spring with the other seeds, they lie still until all the other plants have gone out of their seeds and are at work making green leaves and storing their stems with plant juices.

Then Dodder the Robber comes out. But instead of sending down a root and up a stem like other seeds, he just pushes out a little thread-like body, which fastens into the ground. You might think this an honest little root going down into the ground if you did not know friend Dodder. But it is no root; it does not suck up juices from the earth: it simply anchors the little robber so he cannot be blown away. Now the thread-like body grows larger and sticks up out of the ground, carrying the seed-coat with it. The seed-coat is packed with food which the parent plant stored away there. The young dodder nourishes itself with this food until it is all gone; then it casts off the empty seed-coat, and behold young Dodder ready for the fray. What he very much wants at this time is a fresh young twig to cling to and suck the juice out of. If nothing of the sort is handy he is in a bad way, for he is too helpless to do anything for himself. He has no green leaves, and does not know how to make any, and without green leaves he cannot get a thing to eat. Poor Dodder! after all, it is not wholly his fault he is such a good-for-nothing specimen of planthood. You see he came from bad stock. His parents were like this before him, and no one has ever taught him any better. Well, there he lies, as helpless a plant as you can imagine. But just let a green shoot come within reach! Then you will see! He twists around it without stopping to say “by your leave.” He pierces it with little suckers that draw out its juices. Now Dodder is all right. He has plenty of food without the trouble of making a bit of it himself.

And then how he grows! Up the poor weed he twines, a slender yellow stem that looks as much like yellow yarn as anything else. Around and around he turns; he has no leaves to make, only useless little scales that show where long ago his ancestors once had honest leaves.

You will sometimes find the weeds in a damp place a perfect tangle of dodder vines, so that nothing else is to be seen. They cover the weeds, sucking out their juices and smothering them. And when the time comes the dodder breaks out into innumerable bunches of flowers, which grow at short distances along the yellow stems. These flowers are small and generally white, and clustered so close together that they form a sort of knot or rosette on the stem.

You would never imagine to look at them that they belonged to our Morning-Glory Family.

Their corollas are more or less cleft, being grown together only at the base.