sunbadgerplants: So I live by a lake, and over the last few…
Thursday, August 25th, 2016So I live by a lake, and over the last few years I’ve seen this stuff cropping up all over the water’s edge. At first, I assumed it was someone’s fishing line and never bothered to look closer. But then it started showing up in more and more places.
It’s actually a parasitic plant called Dodder (or Cuscuta), which is unable to produce it’s own chlorophyll. It steals its nutrients from other plants by inserting specialized root projections called haustoria into the vascular system of its host. It’s considered part of the Morning Glory family. I don’t like it. Not only because it’s parasitic, but because it looks like discarded trash!
For what it’s worth, I like dodder. It grows at the salt marsh where I do docent tours.
When it’s in bloom it has tiny white flowers. Newly emerged dodder seedlings lack chlorophyll and can’t manufacture their own food, so they have to find a host really quickly. Dodder seedlings grow selectively in the direction of the nearest host plant. Experiments have shown that the plant is responding to the host plant’s airborne chemical cues.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/2bSi0az.
