180 THE STORY OF THE PLANTS. 



mouths to the bark of the harder plant up which 

 they climb, and feed upon its already elaborated 

 juices. Our English dodder is an example of 

 such a plant. It has no leaves of its own, but 

 consists entirely of a mass of red stems, bearing 

 clusters of pretty pale pink flowers. 



Other plants show another form of parasitism. 

 Mistletoe is one of these. It fastens itself to a 

 poplar or an apple-tree (very seldom an oak) and 

 sucks its juices. But it has also green leaves of 

 its own, which do real work of eating and assimi- 

 lating as well. It is therefore not quite such a 

 parasite as the dodder. Several plants are simi- 

 larly half-parasitic on the roots of wheat and 

 grasses. Among them I may mention, as English 

 instances, the cow-wheat, the yellow rattle, and 

 the pretty little eyebright. 



Broomrape is a parasite of a different sort. 

 It grows on the roots of clover, and has no true 

 leaves ; in their place it produces short scales, 

 which contain no chlorophyll. Several other 

 plants are also devoid of chlorophyll, and there- 

 fore cannot eat carbonic acid for themselves. 

 They live like animals on materials laid by for 

 them by other plants. Such are toothwort, a pale 

 rose-coloured leafless plant, with pretty spiked 

 flowers, which grows by suckers on the roots of 

 ^hazel-trees. The bird's-nest orchid, a delicate 

 brown plant with curious ghost-like blossoms, 

 feeds rather on the organised matter in decaying 

 leaves among thick beechwoods. In this book I 

 have purposely confined your attention for the 

 most part to the true green plants, which are the 

 central and most truly plant-like type; but I 

 ought to tell you now that a great many plants, 

 especially among the lower kinds, behave in this 



