156 HOW TO GROW GOOD CLOVER. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



ON THE PARASITES OF CLOVER. 



Of the truly parasitic plants affecting the clover 

 crop, we have two genera — namely, Omenta or Dodder, 

 and Orobcmche or Broomrape. Both of these, some 

 few years since, were comparatively rare as farm 

 pests ; but as they are probably more abundant on 

 Continental than on our home farms, they are 

 greatly increasing from the constant influx of foreign 

 seeds. 



Cuscuta — Dodder. 



Of the genus Cuscuta we have two species of 

 agricultural importance, — Cuscuta epilinum, the Elax 

 Dodder, and C trifolii, the Clover Dodder. In both, 

 the plant itself consists of a mass of pink and 

 yellowish tendrils, upon which are placed here and 

 there compact bunches of flowers varying alike in 

 colour. The whole plant, in both species, being 

 entirely parasitic — that is, it lives wholly on the 

 juices of its foster-parent, — it has no leaves of its own ; 

 still, however, the Dodder plant is in the first 

 instance produced from seed, each flower being suc- 

 ceeded by a capsule containing two small wrinkled 

 seeds, which, not being larger or lighter in the 

 C epilinum than a linseed, or in the still smaller 

 seed of the clover, in the case of the C. trhfoUi, the 

 seed of flax or clover crops affected with dodder will 

 never be entirely free from it : as an evidence of 



