PLANTS AS CRIMINALS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 January 1925, Page 16

PLANTS AS CRIMINALS.

BAD CHARACTERS OF FOREST AND FIELD. I Thieves and - murderers are not | peculiar to mankind, i You find them among animals, birds, fish, insects, and even in the vegetable world. Of murderers the homely ivy is a | familiar example. Everyone knows how |it will gradually smother and strangle j a tree. .■ | But .the ivy is a mild and; gentle ! plant Compared with the matapolo or Jtree ki|ller of tropical America. : It is a climber to begin with, and crawls up the trunk of a tree, but after a time it begins .to send down aerial roots. These reach the ground, take hold, and draw, up fresh nourishment.' Then the matapolo grows enormously, smothers the forest giant which lias acted as its host, and'soon the tree rocs and falls away, leaving the killer erect in its place. I VICTIMS OF THE DODDER. I The worst plant criminals in England are the dodder and the broomrape. j The dodder grows from seed in' a series of whitish threads which creep : about until they find a suitable victim, such as the clover plant, i Then the dodder stems from suckers | resembling on a small scale those of the octopus, and these- extract from the i clover all its juices, j The dodder stems next become red- | dish and wiry, and in a few weeks the , wretched clover plant is murdered and j the robber occupies its place. | Broora-rape behaves in similar fashion j and attacks gorse, broom, hemp, thyme, | and other plants. I It lives on the 1 juices which it extracts from their roots and grows with 1 remarkable speed. j There may be from seventy to ninety, seqd capsules on each plant, and eaffi capsule will hold fifteen hundred .seeds So tiny are the seeds that they are invisible to the naked eye. Another English sponger is the | “squamaria,” a nasty, colourless, scnlv pffint, which sucks the life, from the roots of other plants.