BIRD'S-NEST TRIBE 225 



3. Bird's-nest {Monofropa). 



Yellow Bird's-nest (ilf. hypdpithys). — Flowers in drooping, or some- 

 times erect racemes, in one form having the filaments, ovary, and style 

 smooth, in another with these parts hairy ; perennial. This plant, which 

 is called also Fir-rape and Pine Bird's-nest, is a very singular one. It is 

 not common in any part of this kingdom, occurring only in some few dry 

 fir and beech woods of England and Scotland. In Monk Wood, near Alton, 

 it is, however, plentiful. It has a stout, erect, succulent stalk, without 

 leaves or branches, but clothed with egg-shaped scaly bracts. This stalk is 

 from six to nine inches high, and has, at its upper part, a cluster of droop- 

 ing brownish-yellow flowers, which when seen at a little distance look as if 

 withered, but which are very succulent, and finally turn quite black. The 

 flowers have all eight stamens, except the terminal one, which has ten. They 

 appear in June and July. This plant is also knoAvn as Hypopithys muUiflora. 



The Bird's-nest has long been considered parasitic on the roots of the fir, 

 and it has much of the general aspect of a parasitic plant ; but it is now very 

 generally believed that it is not a parasite, and Mr. Babington considers this 

 circumstance as proved, and describes the plant, " not parasitical." The 

 Bird's-nest is always found near the roots of fir or beech trees, upon whose 

 fallen, decaying leaves it really subsists, taking nothing from the tree but 

 what it has already discarded. Mr. Rjdands published, a few years since, 

 in the " Phytologist," the result of long and careful investigation of this 

 subject, and has found that the fibres of the roots of Mondtropa possess the 

 small openings called spongioles, and that they imbibe their food from the 

 soil in precisely the same way as any other plants. The greater number of 

 specimens of the plant, when taken recently from the soil, present masses of 

 a fibrous substance, closely adhering to the small fibres and the roots of the 

 plants near which they grow. This fibrous substance was believed to form 

 portions of the root of Mondtropa, but Mr. Rylands, after examining it with 

 the greatest care, was of opinion that in all cases it consisted of a byssoid 

 fungus, which had been formed on the Mondtropa, but that it had no organic 

 connexion with this plant. The species of fungus varied in different specimens 

 of the Bird's-nest, and were found to be hitherto undescribed. 



The word "parasite," when used in reference to plants, is in popular 

 language applied very freely, but the botanist regards as strictly parasitic 

 such plants only as grow on the living parts of other vegetables, and derive 

 their nutriment wholly from them. Mosses, lichens, and some others which 

 merely attach themselves to the surface of other vegetables, taking their 

 food from the atmosphere, from rain and dew, and not from the plants on 

 which they fix themselves, are termed false parasites, or epiphytes, though 

 this term is now, in this country, chiefly used in reference to those orchideous 

 plants which hang on trees, but are nourished by the atmosphere. Many 

 plants familiarly called parasites, as the honeysuckle and bindweed, are of 

 course mere climbers, demanding nothing of the plant around which they 

 grow, save that support which the weak may ask of the strong. Of truly 

 parasitic plants, some attack the external parts of other vegetables, and others 

 insidiously introduce themselves to the internal portions, where they grow 



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