Root-Parasite Carves In Wood.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19120, 12 July 1930, Page 8

Root-Parasite Carves In Wood.

Nature Notes

By James Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

JV’OT NOW, but in summer and autumn, the floor of a glen that stretches towards Lake Taupo is resplendent in light purple and dull purple colours provided by hundreds of flower-clusters of one of the most remarkable plants in New Zealand.

When the flowers are in full bloom, the air in the fairy glen is heavy with their perfume. This seems to change in character with the expanding of the flowers. Fully expanded, they give a delicious fragrance, like daphnes. At other times, the fragrance is reduced to the smell of a ripe melon. When the flow-

ers begin to decay, it is earthy and disagreeable. The Maoris know this plant as pua-te-Reinga, the flower of Hades. To botanists it is Dactylanthus, the finger-plant, a parasite on other plants’ roots, and a member of a notorious group of root-parasites, mostly tropical. There is no evidence that a plant attacked suffers from the parasite’s attention, but as shown in the illustration, part of the root is drawn up and puckered until the formation resembles the petals of a pansy, deftly carved in wood. The finger-plant looks like a foul-smelling fungus. It mimics a fungus, but it belongs to the higher groups of flowering plants.