Piper's bratty 12-year-old brother, Tyler (Jackson Demott Hill), says that the assisted-living facility, Twelve Trees, "sounds more like a second-rate merlot," and quotes Ophelia's mad scene when his grandfather dodders.
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Also known as strangleweed and witches' shoelaces, dodders are listed among the 10 worst weeds in the United States.
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Another mechanism by which these dodders recognize which plants to use as hosts depends on the light that's reflected off the plant's surface. Cuscuta campestris is highly attracted to "far red light", which is a wavelength that is reflected by most plant surfaces. Dodders that were exposed to unfiltered light were able to attach to their host before their energy had been totally exhausted, but dodders that were only exposed to red light lost their way. This could be a technique by which to control C. campestris infestations if exposed to red light within the early stages of development, to avoid the spread and growth of the plant.
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This is a member of grassland and chaparral plant communities and can be found in weedy, partially disturbed areas. Like most other dodders, this species is considered a noxious weed in many areas.
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European Society for Evolutionary Biology. 20 471-478. Stem parasitic plants, unlike most root parasites, germinate using the resources inside their endosperms and are able to survive for some time. For example, the dodders (Cuscuta spp.) drop their seeds to the ground.
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The time between ingestion by the insect and attainment of an infectious titer in the salivary glands is termed the latency period. Phytoplasmas can also be spread via dodders (Cuscuta) or by vegetative propagation such as the grafting of infected plant tissue onto a healthy plant.
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Cuscuta gronovii was named in honor of botanist Jay Fredrik Gronon. The genus Cuscuta was named after the Arabic word for "dodders", and the word dodder originates from an Old English word meaning "todder". There are four widely used common names for this species: common dodder, scaldweed, swamp dodder, and love dodder.
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C. compacta is a heterotrophic parasitic plant meaning they attach themselves around other plants and remove their nutrients. As compact dodders age over time, it does not grow any roots. Instead of growing roots, it produces a slender shoot that develops into tendrils. Although it takes time, the tendrils begin to bend and move in different directions until it has attached itself to a host.
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Nonetheless, Nickrent comments that "Cassytha is uneqivocally assigned to Lauraceae based on (both) morphological and molecular data."The Parasitic Plant Connection: Phylogenetic Relationships of Parasitic Flowering Plants In its divergence from habits typical of the Lauraceae, Cassytha also presents examples of mosaic evolutionKuijt, J. 1969. The Biology of Parasitic Flowering Plants. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Several species of Cassytha are regarded as pests in various regions, though as a rule they are not as serious a problem as the true dodders.
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It is believed that the plant uses two methods of finding a host. The stem detects its host plant's scent and orients itself in that direction. Scientists used volatiles from tomato plants (α-pinene, β-myrcene, and β-phellandrene) to test the reaction of C. pentagona and found that the stem orients itself in the direction of the odor. Some studies suggest that by using light reflecting from nearby plants dodders are able to select host with higher sugar because of the levels of chlorophyll in the leaves.
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Engelmann devoted himself to his medical practice, but in his later years made a specialty of botany. An 1842 monograph on dodders, a very difficult genus to examine, had established his reputation as a botanist. He took several vacations from his medical practice and devoted them all to the gathering of data for his scientific work, the details of which were elaborated at his home. One of these vacations extended from 1856 to 1858, the greater part of the first summer having been spent in botanical work at the Harvard gardens and herbarium in companionship with Asa Gray.
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