538 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



THE DODDER 



TeacJwr's Story 



If Sinbad's "Old Man of the 

 Sea" had been also a sneak thief, 

 then we might well liken him to 

 dodder. There is an opportu- 

 nity for an excellent moral lesson 

 connected with the study of dod- 

 der and its underhand ways. 

 When a plant ceases to be self- 

 supporting, when it gets its own 

 living from the food made by 

 other plants for their own sus- 

 tenance, it loses its own power of 

 food-making; and the dodder is 

 an excellent example of the in- 

 evitable punishment for "spong- 

 ing" a living. The dodder has 

 no leaves of its own for it does 

 not need to manufacture food 

 nor to digest it. Its dull yellow 

 stems reach out in long tendrils, 

 swayed by eveiy breeze, until 

 they come in contact with some 

 other plant to which they at once 

 make fast. One of these tendrils 

 seizes its victim plant as a serpent 

 winds its prey, except that it 

 always winds in the same direc- 

 tion it passes under from the 

 right side and over from the left. 

 Who knows whether the serpents 

 are always so methodical ! After 

 dodder gets its hold, little pro- 

 jections appear upon its coiled 

 stems, which look like the prolegs 

 of a caterpillar; but they are not 

 legs, they are suckers, worse 

 than those of the devil-fish; for 

 the latter uses its suckers only to 

 hold fast its prey; but the dod- 

 der uses its suckers to penetrate 

 the bark of its victim, and reach 

 down to the sap channels where 

 they may, vampirelike, suck the 

 blood from their victims, or 

 rather the matured sap which 

 is flowing from the leaves to 

 the growing points of the host 

 plant. Not having anything else to do, dodder devotes its energies to the 

 producing of seeds, in order to do more mischief. The species which 



Dodder in blossom. 

 Photo by Cyrus Crosby. 



