182 PLANT LIFE 



CHAPTER XVI 



FLOWERING PARASITES 



IT has been already pointed out that the 

 non-green saprophytes or parasites are by 

 no means limited to the classes of Fungi and 

 Bacteria. Quite a large number of the 

 flowering plants have adopted the habit 

 of utilising extraneous stores of organic 

 food, and in connection therewith have more 

 or less lost the faculty of producing chloro- 

 phyll. There is the strongest possible 

 evidence that the change has come about 

 in correlation with the altered conditions of 

 nutrition. In other words, the more or less 

 complex food-substances present in the living 

 or dead bodies of other organisms do influence 

 the structure of those plants which make use 

 of them, and one result is seen in the loss of 

 the faculty of producing chlorophyll. 



One might, then, expect to find many links 

 connecting the normal green plants with those 

 highly specialised, or as they are often called, 

 degraded, forms characteristic of extreme 

 parasites. And as a matter of fact we can 

 trace such a series in a number of instances. 



The Mistletoe (Viscum album) is a parasite 

 which betrays very little of the degeneration 



