50 FIEST STUDIES IN PLANT LIFE 



through the bird sticks to the branch on which he is 

 seated. Then, if the seed can find a crack in the 

 bark, it is able to germinate and strike its roots into 

 the tree. In this way the mistletoe is able to suck 

 food from the sap-tubes of the tree, while it also makes 

 some food for itself by using its own leaves. 



9. The mistletoe, you see, does a little work for 

 itself ; but the dodder is supported and fed entirely 

 by the bush or grass round which it twines. It ger- 

 minates indeed, on the ground ; but whenever it has 



How the dodder clings The Australian smooth scrub ^'ine, 



and sucks. or dodder laurel (after Von MueUer). 



twined round a bush, or a clover plant, the root dies, 

 and it lives entirely by piercing and sucking the plant 

 that holds it up. It grows no leaves, and takes its 

 food ready-made, just as the green fly does that pierces 

 and sucks the rose-leaf. The dodder best known in 

 Australia is the dodder that lives on lucerne. Many 

 of you must have seen the dense tangled reddish masses 

 of dodder that smother and suck the life out of lucerne 

 plants. There are large tree-dodders (fig. 31) ; but 

 the lucerne-dodder consists of slender, thread-like 

 reddish stems. Sometimes the younger shoots of the 



