PARASITIC PLANTS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17229, 8 April 1930, Page 11

PARASITIC PLANTS

“REFORMATION OVERDUE"

LONDON, March 23

"A society for the reformation of plants seems overdue," Mr. George Tandy, botanist in the Barrier Reef expedition, told a press representative. “Whole groups have given themselves u]> to the most abandoned and vicious courses, sometimes greatly to our detriment. Their morals are of the worst. Thus, the dodder assassinates the hard-working and useful lucerne, and it will even feign death till the unwary plant sends a shoot within its reach.

“Many parasitic plants, as a result of long living on the dine, become unemployable. The mistletoe in Australia, as elsewhere, dines not work, but lives on the toil of trees whereon it plants itself. Parasitic Jigs ami others actually strangle their treehosts. Sundews and pitcher-plants display very wonderful and perverted ingenuity in luring insects to their doom in order to eat them. Orchids become social buttortli.'m, living on decaving organic maitler, •instead of making food for the soil. Many plants have given up family fife and rely on man to propagate lliet) by means of cuttings. ’ ’