2006-09-29 12:19:47 · 4 answers · asked by Grandma Coffee 2 in Home & Garden ➔ Garden & Landscape
Dodder is a parasite plant that lacks chlorophyll. It attaches itself to a plant and feeds off it, without rooting in the ground. It is straw-colored and produces very small flowers. It has no leaves.
There is an Asian version, sometimes used in folk medicine, commonly known as 'Devils Guts'.
The link has photos and descriptions of dodder and the plants it commonly attacks.
I was able to save a small planting of bunching onions (scallions) this Spring by carefully picking off the dodder stems winding around about two dozen plants. I have not seen it again this year.
2006-09-29 13:05:08 · answer #1 · answered by Cornpatch 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i just read an article somewhere, paper,net, who knows, just a day or so ago, it seems that this "plant" is more of a parasite to other rooted plants. it has the ability to rap around the stem/stalk of the "host" plant so it is sometimes referred to as the strangler plant. it inserts a tendril into the host and draws
nutrients from the host plant. if it doesn't find a host in a few days it will die. it also seems that this plant can pick it's host, there was some sort of experiment between tomato plants and wheat
and the dotter plant would choose the tomato plant more times than the wheat plant. now that i think about it i think the info that I'm remembering was on the yahoo news list yesterday.
2006-09-29 19:53:47 · answer #2 · answered by barrbou214 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
We have Dodder in the hills of SoCal. It is orange and sort of like Silly String. I even had it on one of my client's Ivy Geraniums in Pasadena. My garden guru friend said the only way to kill it is to burn it with Nitrogen(because it can't make it's own-parasite). I'm not sure how that works. But I tried to cut it off and couldn't save much of the plant so I dug out the whole plant. And thankfully the Dodder hasn't returned.
2006-09-30 01:07:50 · answer #3 · answered by prillville 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I heard about dodder for the first time yesterday, and read more about its affinity for tomato plants in today's paper. I can't add more to the previous posts or to the excellent link...but I can say, this sounds like a horror movie waiting to be made. Snakes on a plane got nuthin' on dodder on a tomato!
2006-09-29 21:01:20 · answer #4 · answered by keepsondancing 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋