xix.] CLOVER DODDER. 125 



themselves with the matted threads of the parasite, and 

 went home as if clothed in bear skins. Clover dodder 

 is generally said to be an annual ; but observers are not 

 wanting who have expressed a belief that it is often 

 perennial, and lives on from year to year irrespective of 

 the introduction of new seed, which, indeed, it very 

 seldom produces in Britain. The dodders are said to 

 be acrid and purgative, and mischievous to flocks and 

 herds. It is singular that the parasite should be capable 

 of elaborating acrid principles from the juices of a sweet 

 non-acrid host. 



Dodders are still largely imported to Britain in unclean 

 foreign seed. Prof. Lindley has stated that both clover 

 dodder and flax dodder were first imported to this 

 country from Afghanistan so lately as 1843. Dodder is 

 so common now that Prof. Buckman, to whom we are 

 indebted for a most interesting and instructive essay on 

 dodders, records an instance of seventy bushels of flax 

 dodder seeds being sifted out of a single field of flax seed, 

 whilst a year or two afterwards almost as much was separ- 

 ated from a crop of flax grown at the Royal Agricultural 

 College. 



On rare occasions clover dodder produces seeds in 

 Britain ; and as there is evidence that the threadlike 

 stems are sometimes perennial, dodder refuse should 

 never be left on the ground to rot. Every patch of 

 dodder should be carefully raked together and burnt, 

 and by this process and careful sifting its appearance in 

 the fields can generally be prevented. Some agriculturists, 

 on first seeing the yellow patches in the clover fields, 

 remove all the clover from the outer edges of the invaded 

 patch for a width of about eighteen inches ; this leaves 

 nothing for the dodder to prey upon, as the threadlike 

 stems cannot stretch across the eighteen inches of vacant 

 ground. The clover is removed because it is extremely 

 difficult to entirely remove dodder. 



