BINDWEED TRIBE 249 



earth about the base of the stems of the hoj). The seeds of the Dodder, 

 escaping from their capsules, will remain on the earth's surface through the 

 winter, and germinate 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 embryo of the Dodder, convincing us 

 that vegetable instincts are innate ; for even in the seed, if examined, the 

 embryo may be found convolved about the central fleshy globose albumen. 

 By the time the hop stems will have burst through the soil, man}^ of the 

 embryos of the Dodder will have perished ; but when 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 absorbing glands into the hop-stem at many of the points at 

 which they clasp it." This botanist adds, that he had the Dodder growing 

 on hops in his garden for three successive summers. " In one of the summers," 

 he remarks, " it flourished besides on an exotic species of teasel {Accenops 

 vulgaris), nearly allied to the British Dipsacus pilosus, which had grown up 

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

 teasel and the Dodder, along with those of the hop, having met at the 

 rubbish-heap during the preceding winter, in the operation of cleansing 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 plant of the red Malabar nightshade, and on some other plant 

 whose name I have forgotten. In the green-houses at Cambridge, a very 

 vigorously-growing perennial species of Dodder, if I rightly remember, from 

 China, luxuriates on plants of the common and broad-leaved ivy, and on the 

 succulent shoots of the pelargonium, known by the name of the horse-shoe 

 geranium." Mr. Dovaston remarks, that he has seen one of the Dodders in 

 such tangled profusion at Liphook, in Hampshire, that it absolutely pulled 

 down and killed the nettles. 



Gerarde desciibes the Dodder as "a strange herbe, altogether without 

 leaves or roote, like unto threds, very much snarled or wrapped together 

 confusedly, winding itselfe about bushes and hedges, and sundrie kindes of 

 herbes. The threds are somewhat red, upon which grow here and there 

 little round heads or knops, bringing forth at the first slender white flowers, 

 afterwards a small seede." The old writers had several profane and coarse 

 names for the plant. It was also commonly called Tetter and Strangle-weed ; 

 and the learned Sir Thomas Browne, who mentions it by these names, tells 

 in his " Quincunx " of a rural charm used in his day against these troul)le- 

 some twining plants, which consisted of placing a chalked tile at each of the 

 four corners, and another in the middle of the field in which it grew, " in 

 order," as he says, " to diffuse the magic all about." 



2. Flax Dodder (C. epiUnum).— Heads of flowers with bracts, sessile, 



II.— 32 



