Wild-Flower Study 539 



attack clover and other farm crops seem to manage to get their seeds 

 harvested with the rest; and the farmer who does not know how to test 

 his clover seed for impurities, sows with it the seeds of its enemy. 



The dodder flowers are small, globular and crowded together. The 

 calyx has five lobes; the corolla is globular, with five little lobes around 

 its margin and a stamen set in each notch. A ew of the species have a 

 four-lobed calyx and corolla; but however many the lobes, the flowers are 

 shiftless looking and are yellowish or greenish white ; despite its shiftless 

 appearance, however, each flower manages to mature four perfectly good, 

 plump seeds. 



There are, according to Gray, nine species of dodder more or less 

 common in America. Some of the species, among which is the flax 

 dodder, live only upon certain other species of plant life, while others take 

 almost anything that comes within reach. Where it flourishes, it grows 

 so abundantly that it makes large yellow patches in fields, completely 

 choking out the leaves of its victims. 



LESSON CXXX 

 THE DODDER 



Leading thought There are some plants which not only depend upon 

 other plants to hold them up, but they suck the life-juice from these plants 

 and thus they steal their living. 



Method Bring in dodder with the host plant for the pupils to study in 

 the schoolroom, and ask them to observe afterwards the deadly work of 

 this parasite in the field. 



Observations r. What is the color of the stem? In which direction 

 does it wind? 



2 . How is the stem fastened to the host plant ? Tear off these suckers 

 and examine the place where they were attached with a lens, and note if 

 they enter into the stem of the host plant. 



3. How does the dodder get hold of its victim? Has the dodder any 

 leaves of its own? How can it get along and grow without leaves? 



4. How do the flowers look through a lens? Are there many flowers? 

 Can you see the petal lobes and the stamens? 



5. How many seeds does each flower develop? How do the seeds 

 look? In what way are they a danger to our agriculture? 



I should also avoid the information method. It does a child little good merely to 

 tell him matters of fact. The facts are not central to him and he must retain them 

 by a process of .sheer memory; and in order that the teacher may know whether he 

 remembers, the recitation is employed, re-cite, to tell over again. The educational 

 processes of my younger days were mostly of this order, the book or the teacher told, 

 I re-told, but the results were always modified by an unpredictable coefficient of 

 evaporation. Good teachers now question the child to discover what he has found out 

 or what he feels, or to suggest what further steps may be taken, and not to mark him 

 on what he remembers. In other words, the present-day process is to set the pupil 

 independent!]' at work, whether he is young or old, and the information-leaflet or 

 lesson does not do this. Of course, it is necessary to give some information, but 

 chiefly for the purpose of putting the pupil in the way of acquiring for himself and 

 to answer his natural inquiries; but information-giving about nature subjects is not 

 nature-study. L. H. BAILEY in "The Outlook to Nature." 



