506 Chit'chaL 



frosts nor rains of winter will be able to dislodge the seeds thus infixed ; 

 and in the following spring or summer they will germinate. Two mode- 

 rately sized misseltoe bushes are now growing, side by side, on a young 

 tree of the pink-flowered hawthorn, in the old botanic garden at Bury St. 

 Edmunds, both which emanated from a single seed, sown in the above 

 manner, on this tree, about seven years ago. It is known to botanists that 

 the seed of the misseltoe occasionally includes two embryoes, as does the 

 seed of the onion and of the orange ; but it would seem, that of these two 

 plants one is masculine and the other feminine ; for Mr. Turner, the curator 

 of the above garden, in the spring of this year, informed me, that one plant 

 was abounding in berries, while the other had not a single berry on it. 

 More accurate subsequent observation must determine whether they 

 actually are distinct in sex j and then, if this be usually the case with most 

 or all pairs of misseltoe plants which may spring from a single seed. 

 Should observation affirm these to be facts, another admirable instance c£ 

 comprehensive provision in nature will be manifest. 



The Greater Dodder (Cuscuta europce^a L.). — This parasite can be esta- 

 blished wherever the hop plant grows, by placing, in the autumn, a wreath 

 of the dodder vine, bearing ripe capsules, on the earth about the base of 

 the stems of the hop plant. The seeds of the dodder, escaping from their 

 capsules, will remain on the earth's face through the winter, and germi- 

 nate early in the ensuing spring, some days ere the stems of the hop shoot 

 forth. It will then be highly pleasing to observe the spiral convolutions of 

 the sprouting embryoes of the dodder, evincing that vegetable instincts are 

 innate; for even in the seed, if examined, the embryo may be found con- 

 volved about the central fleshy globose albumen. By the time the hop 

 stems have burst through the soil, many of the embryoes of the dodder 

 will have perished ; but where the survivors happen to touch the hop stem 

 they very soon adhere, and insert their sap-sucking glands into the bark of 

 the hop stem ; and, from the date of doing this, speedily change their pale 

 aspect and feeble condition to a ruddy healthy hue, and a state of gross 

 luxuriance ; and these latter effects are maintained through all the copious 

 ramifications of the plant, by the branches emitting a fresh cluster of absorb- 

 ing glands into the hop stem, at many of the points at which they clasp 

 it. Smith, in his English Flora (Vol. II. p. 25.), describes this species as 

 ** rare:" this can scarcely be, as in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and 

 Suffolk, in which I have resided, I have known of its abounding. " Thistles, 

 nettles, flax, and other annual or biennial herbs," are, according to Smith, 

 in the place cited, its habitats : my Huntingdonshire and Suffolk plants 

 were on the hop : the Cambridgeshire ones were shown me when gathered; 

 I have forgotten off* what plants. Relhan's Flora Cantabrigiensis (edit. 2nd) 

 states that it grows on nettles, Torilus ^nthriscus, the hop, and beans, and 

 that the vernacular name for it is " hell-weed, or devil's guts," doubtless, 

 in expression of the pertinacious bonds formed by its interlacing wreaths 

 of countless branches. On the hop, in a garden, established as above 

 described, I had the greater dodder to satisfaction, for three successive 

 summers, when I left the place ; and, in one of these summers, it flourished 

 besides on an exotic species of teasel ( Acee^nops vulgaris Schrader\ nearly 

 allied to the British jDipsacus pilosus L.y which had grown up beside the 

 rubbish heap, merely from the dead seed-bearing stems of theteasel and of the 

 dodder, along with those of the hop, having met at the rubbish heap, during 

 the preceding winter, in the operation of clearing the garden of its annual 

 herbage. The reddened wreaths of dodder branches, knotted with heads 

 of flowers, were hung in elegant festoons about the arm-spread branches 

 of the teasel, and contrasted strikingly with its abundant verdant leaves. 

 I have known this species transplanted by cuttings, or rather by a branch 

 broken off", into a stove, and there successfully established on a growing 



