THE YOUNG NATUBA.LIST. 



58 



throughout England and the south of 

 Scotland. It grows parasitical on the 

 roots of trees such as hazel, alder, 

 sycamore, &c. It appears early in 

 spring, from March to May, and is 

 the most lovely and attractive of our 

 native parasites. It pushes up a suc- 

 culent, scaly, downy spike of large 

 creamy- vvhite flowers tinged with pink, 

 attaining a height of six or eight 

 inches. If dug up, the stem will be 

 found to merge into a large, swollen, 

 scaly excresence with numerous pro- 

 tuberances, which are dormant stems, 

 ready to spring up as aerial flower- 

 bearing spikes in future seasons, the 

 whole mass closely investing and ad- 

 hering to the root of the tree on which 

 it feeds. It is well worth looking for 

 and attentively examining when found, 

 as it is clearly the most highly developed 

 of our root parasites, the flowers being 

 admirably adapted for insect fertilisa- 

 tion, and its wide range of "hosts" 

 on which it can prey shows its long 

 continuance in the parasitic habit. 

 Besides these enumerated, there is also 

 the bastard toad-flax fThesium), a 

 modest little straggling plant, found 

 in southern pastures, parasitic on the 

 roots of various plants. In addition 

 to these there are also a large and 

 increasing number of plants suspected 

 of parasitism, or which, under certain 

 circumstances, are found to be parasi- 

 tical, although the habit has not yet 

 become so confirmed as to render them 



unable to maintain an independent 

 existence. The N.O. Scrophulariacese 

 furnishes the greater number of such 

 plants, as, for example, the cow-wheats 

 (Melampyrum), the yellow rattles (Bhi- 

 nanthus), the eye-bright, and Bartsias. 

 These are all found to be very detri- 

 mental to the pastures in which they 

 abound, and are accused of absorbing 

 their nutriment from the roots of the 

 grasses amongst which they grow. 



There is also another class of plants 

 known as Saprophytes which grow only 

 on decaying, decomposing organic 

 matter, seizing hold of, and rearrang- 

 ing, the mutable, assimilable sub- 

 stances before they are resolved into 

 their constituent elements. This is 

 the characteristic of the great section 

 of Fungi which live and revel in putre- 

 faction. The distinction betwixt a 

 parasite and a saprophyte is, that the 

 parasite attacks and preys on living 

 plants, whilst the saprophyte only 

 seizes hold of the dead and decom- 

 posing organism. Decaying vegetable 

 substances are known as humus, and it 

 furnishes food supplies for various 

 plants. The little Adoxa of the hedge- 

 rows loves to grow in such soil ; so do 

 several of our orchids, such as Goody- 

 era repens, which is never found except 

 in fir plantations amongst the fallen 

 leaves, and of a similar character are 

 the winter greens (Pyrola). A plant 

 which has occasioned a good deal of 

 controversy regarding it mode of ob- 



