88 
NATURE STUDY. 
Organotopic Plants. II. 
BY FREDERICK W. BATCHEEDER. 
True parasites, as we have seen, steal the assimilated 
food material of their hosts. Their standing in the plant 
world is well established and there is little difficulty in 
classifying them or in naming those of any given region 
whose plant life has been investigated. The connection of 
parasite with host is direct and may easily be observed. 
With the hemiparasites the case is different. The true 
relation of these plants to their hosts is obscured by various 
circumstances. They all have green leaves and many of 
them have brightly colored flowers. Besides this, there 
are many degrees of parasitism among them, some being 
more, some less dependent on the host. I cannot help sus¬ 
pecting, for instance, that the yellow Gerardias, (now sep¬ 
arated by some systematists as the genus Dasystoma,) have 
gone farther on the downward road than the purple 
ones, for this reason: my herbarium specimens of the for¬ 
mer, G. pedicularia, flava and quercifolia, have always 
turned “black as your shoe” in drying, while the purple 
ones, G. paupercula and tenuifolia, heve kept the colors 
both of the leaves and flowers as well as the average flower¬ 
ing plant. It is also to be noted that the yellow Gerardias 
turn black in the field long before the arrival of frost. This 
habit of turning black when drying appears to be charac¬ 
teristic of degenerate or decadent plants, a brand of servi¬ 
tude which they are'pretty sure to find themselves, soon¬ 
er or later, unable to hide. There is no doubt that criti¬ 
cal studies of hemiparasitism in its various degrees will 
add many hitherto unsuspected members to the list of hemi- 
parasitic flowering plants. 
The study of saprophytism in flowering plants is practi¬ 
cally a new one. Seed-bearing saprophytes have hitherto 
