. The Indiana weed book. Weeds. 110 THE INDIANA WEED Fig. 75. Branch with flowers. (After Cox.) soil, mostly in old neglected fields or along railways. May-Sept. It is propagated by spreading root- stocks, which form buds and send up shoots at close intervals. As with the hedge bindweed the top growth must be kept down and the roots starved out. Remedies the same; or, if in small patches, hoe cutting and salting. The Dodder Family.— CUSCUTACEvE. Yellow or whitish twining para- sites with very slender stems and leaves reduced to minute scales. Flowers small, mostly white, borne in dense
. The Indiana weed book. Weeds. 110 THE INDIANA WEED Fig. 75. Branch with flowers. (After Cox.) soil, mostly in old neglected fields or along railways. May-Sept. It is propagated by spreading root- stocks, which form buds and send up shoots at close intervals. As with the hedge bindweed the top growth must be kept down and the roots starved out. Remedies the same; or, if in small patches, hoe cutting and salting. The Dodder Family.— CUSCUTACEvE. Yellow or whitish twining para- sites with very slender stems and leaves reduced to minute scales. Flowers small, mostly white, borne in dense clusters; calyx 5-lobed or 5-parted; corolla bell- shaped or cylindric, 5-lobed, the tube with small fringe-like scales between the lobes; stamens 5; ovary 2-celled. Fruit a 1-4-seeded capsule, or small globose pod, opening with a lid or bursting irreg- ularly. A small family of leafless annual herbs with thread-like twin- ing stems, known as dodders or strangle-weeds, and parasitic on other herbs and shrubs by numerous minute suckers put out from the stem. All dodders are parasites by suicide. That is, each plant springs from a Seed which furnishes it nourishment until it finds some suitable host about which to coil. In coiling it con- tracts and so pulls itself up by the roots. If not uprooted a por- tion of the stem a few inches above the ground soon withers, dies and breaks apart while the upper twining portion with its numer- ous minute suckers continues to flourish on the juices of its host. If from the beginning one could trace its history he would doubtless find that like most other plants the dodder once had leaves but a weak stem, and desiring to reach the light began to twine. Tasting juices by chance it was nourished by them and so began a downfall which has continued until it presents the de- graded spectacle of a plant without a root, without a twig, without a leaf and with a stem so useless as to be inadequate to bear its own Weight. Other plants with smaller b
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectweeds, bookyear1912
