CHAPTER 2ae 
PARASITIC PLANTS 
In this chapter we shall briefly glance at the English 
examples of the great group of parasitic flowering plants. 
We need not here consider the Funguses, divided into 
the two sections of feeders on decaying and feeders on 
living organic matter, for they have been described in 
Chapter VII., but I want simply to draw your attention 
to three or four common English parasitic flowers that 
you may find any day upon your rambles, and which are 
well worth two or three pages. 
And first I want you to recall the orthodox type of 
a well-behaved flowering plant. Its roots are sucking up 
moisture from the ground, and with the moisture they pick 
up dissolved mineral substances, such as sulphur, iron, etc., 
with various nitrogen compounds, all of which are re- 
quired in their business. Meanwhile the leaves are 
busy breaking up the carbonic acid in the chlorophyll 
corpuscles, and the whole plant is breathing in at every 
pore the oxygen which the protoplasm requires to give 
it energy to do its work. 
Now the parasitic plant declines to give itself all this 
trouble, and steals its brooms ready-made. (The name 
parasite, by-the-by, means one who feeds by the side 
of another, and was given by the ancients to the poor, 
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