- Joined
- Mar 18, 1999
- Messages
- 9,966
I have seen these strange orange viney plant like things all over the hills lately. It feels kind of sticky and rubbery.
Come to find out it's a dodder, a parasite plant that attaches itself to a host plant and feeds off it until it's dead. When the dodder dies, it looks like a huge dry tumbleweed. Another helpful fuel for fires to spread here.
From Wiki: Dodder seeds sprout at or near the surface of the soil. While dodder germination can occur without a host, it has to reach a green plant quickly; dodder grows toward the smell of nearby plants. [1] If a plant is not reached within 5 to 10 days of germination, the dodder seedling will die.
After a dodder attaches itself to a plant, it wraps itself around it. If the host contains food beneficial to dodder, the dodder produces haustoria that insert themselves into the vascular system of the host. The original root of the dodder in the soil then dies. The dodder can grow and attach itself to multiple plants. In tropical areas it can grow more or less continuously, and may reach high into the canopy of shrubs and trees; in temperate regions it is an annual plant and is restricted to relatively low vegetation that can be reached by new seedlings each spring.
Come to find out it's a dodder, a parasite plant that attaches itself to a host plant and feeds off it until it's dead. When the dodder dies, it looks like a huge dry tumbleweed. Another helpful fuel for fires to spread here.
From Wiki: Dodder seeds sprout at or near the surface of the soil. While dodder germination can occur without a host, it has to reach a green plant quickly; dodder grows toward the smell of nearby plants. [1] If a plant is not reached within 5 to 10 days of germination, the dodder seedling will die.
After a dodder attaches itself to a plant, it wraps itself around it. If the host contains food beneficial to dodder, the dodder produces haustoria that insert themselves into the vascular system of the host. The original root of the dodder in the soil then dies. The dodder can grow and attach itself to multiple plants. In tropical areas it can grow more or less continuously, and may reach high into the canopy of shrubs and trees; in temperate regions it is an annual plant and is restricted to relatively low vegetation that can be reached by new seedlings each spring.
it's kind of like a XENOMORPH...
