PARASITIC PLANTS 217 
August, you will occasionally come upon a patch that 
looks as if it had been dashed to the ground by a heavy 
shower. Look more closely, however, and you will see 
that the whole patch is 
entangled in the meshes of 
some plant with red, thread- 
like stems, at the joints of 
which are small balls of 
wavy, flesh-coloured flowers. 
There is no organised plant, 
but the general appearance 
is something like a skein of thin red wool with which an 
active kitten has been playing for half an hour. If com- 
plicated structure be the only test for a high class, the 
Dodder must come very low down, for the whole plant 
consists of these stem-threads and tiny flowers. Even the 
seed has become more simple. There are no seed-leaves, or 
cotyledons, but from the sprouting seed there comes a 
thread, twisted like a corkscrew, which lays hold of any 
growing stem near it, winds two or three coils around it, 
and rises with its growth, having no interest in the soil, 
for in that it cannot grow. The free end goes on twining 
and twisting, lapping fresh clover-stalks, if that be the 
luckless crop, and from the inside of each coil tiny 
suckers are driven into the soft stalk, looking under 
the microscope like the false legs you may see on the 
rear of two-thirds of most caterpillars. Not only clover, 
but furze, thistles, and nettles are subject to its attack. 
Our last example, the Toothwort, is rather repulsive in 
appearance, for, in addition to its weird shape, it has a 
most unpleasant corpse-like colour, You may find it, not 
very commonly, upon the roots of the Hazel in April 
or May. That is to say, you will then see the upright 
DODDER, 
