. Handbook of nature-study for teachers and parents, based on the Cornell nature-study leaflets. Nature study. 538 Handbook of Natnre-Study THE DODDER Teacher's Story If Sinbad's "Old Man of the Sea" had been also a sneak thief, then we might well liken him to dodder. There is an opportu- nity for an excellent moral lesson connected with the study of dod- der and its underhand ways. When a plant ceases to be self- supporting, when it gets its own living from the food made by other plants for their own sus- tenance, it loses its own power of food-making; and the dodder is an excellent
. Handbook of nature-study for teachers and parents, based on the Cornell nature-study leaflets. Nature study. 538 Handbook of Natnre-Study THE DODDER Teacher's Story If Sinbad's "Old Man of the Sea" had been also a sneak thief, then we might well liken him to dodder. There is an opportu- nity for an excellent moral lesson connected with the study of dod- der and its underhand ways. When a plant ceases to be self- supporting, when it gets its own living from the food made by other plants for their own sus- tenance, it loses its own power of food-making; and the dodder is an excellent example of the in- evitable punishment for "spong- ing" a living. The dodder has no leaves of its own for it does not need to manufacture food nor to digest it. Its dull yellow stems reach out in long tendrils, swayed by eveiy breeze, until they come in contact with some other plant to which they at once make fast. One of these tendrils seizes its victim plant as a serpent winds its prey, except that it always winds in the same direc- tion—it passes under from the right side and over from the left. Who knows whether the serpents are always so methodical! After dodder gets its hold, little pro- jections appear upon its coiled stems, which look like the prolegs of a caterpillar; but they are not legs, they are suckers, worse than those of the devil-fish; for the latter uses its suckers only to hold fast its prey; but the dod- der uses its suckers to penetrate the bark of its victim, and reach down to the sap channels where they may, vampirelike, suek the blood from their victims, or rather the matured sap which is flowing from the leaves to the growing points of the host plant. Not having anything else to do, dodder devotes its energies to the producing of seeds, in order to do more mischief. The species which. Dodder in blossom. Photo by Cyrus Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for read
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