PART III 



ECOLOGY AND ECONOMIC BOTANY 



CHAPTER XXX 

 PARASITES AND CARNIVOROUS PLANTS 



377. Ecology.* Plant ecology discusses the way in which 

 plants get on with their animal and plant neighbors and, above 

 all, the way in which they adjust themselves to the nature of 

 the soil and climate in which they live. Ecology, in short, 

 treats of the relations of plants to the world about them. A 

 good deal of what has been said in previous chapters on such 

 topics as parasitic plants, climbing plants, the movements of 

 leaves, the coating of hairs on stems and leaves, the storage 

 of water in epidermis cells, is really ecological botany, although 

 it is not so designated in the sections where it occurs. It is 

 evident enough that much of the subject-matter of ecology is 

 merely a special department of physiology, but another portion 

 of it forms an important part of plant geography. 



378. Parasites. By the term parasite in botany, a plant 

 is meant which draws its food supply wholly or partially 

 from another living plant or animal called the host. In Sec. 29 

 the life history of a familiar parasite, the dodder, was briefly 

 sketched, and the parasitic fungi among spore plants have been 

 discussed in Chapter xxn. 



* To THE INSTRUCTOR : The treatment of the subject of ecology will per- 

 tain almost entirely to seed plants. Many ecological topics relating to spore 

 plants have been discussed, under the various groups described in Part II. 



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