PARASITES 183 
sends up from a mass of fleshy roots a bare brown 
stem about a foot high, bearing a spike of brown 
flowers, the whole being so much of the same colour 
as the dead beech leaves among which the plant is 
usually found that it may easily be passed over. It is 
quite incapable of manufacturing its own food, but 
feeds on the decaying vegetable material which was 
manufactured by the trees under whose shadow it 
grows. 
It is but a step from saprophytes such as this to 
parasites, which feed, not on dead, but on living 
organic matter. In the case of the higher plants, the 
hosts are always themselves plants, though, as pointed 
out on p. 78, they are, in the case of the Fungi, 
sometimes animals. One of the most interesting of 
these parasites is, like the Bird’s-nest Orchis, found in 
woods—the Yellow Bird’s-nest (Monotropa Hypo- 
pitys). This is, like the last, a leafless plant devoid of 
chlorophyll, sending up from a tangled root-mass one 
or more pale yellow stems, each bearing a drooping 
raceme of flowers of the same colour. The flowers 
show affinities to the Heath family (Ericacee), but the 
plant differs much from any other member of that 
Order. The Yellow Bird’s-nest is always found 
associated with the mycelium, or cobwebby under- 
ground portion, of a fungus, on which it appears to 
be parasitic. The fungus is in turn a saprophyte, and 
the Seed Plant feeds at second hand, so to speak, on 
decaying vegetable matter. This parasitism of a seed 
plant on a fungus is a very exceptional case. A 
more frequent type is offered by the Broomrapes 
(Orobanche), which we may find in meadows, etc., 
growing on Clover, Thyme, Ivy, and so on. These 
