Dodder

Greater or European dodder is a parasite with neither leaves nor working roots: a tangle of long, thin, yellowish or reddish stems that twine over other plants and feed on them. Its seed sprouts in the soil like any other, but once the young stem has fastened itself to a host with small suckers, its first root dies away and the plant lives wholly on the host's sap. It grows on nettles, thistles, hops, beans, lucerne and many other herbs, carrying small, bell-shaped flowers in tight round heads. Native to Europe, it also grows in North Africa, western Asia and the Himalayas, and has been introduced to North America. The genus name came to botany through an Arabic word. Because it can smother and ruin crops, farmers gave it hard names, among them hellweed, strangle tare, devil's guts and scaldweed, for the scorched look it leaves on a bean field. It was used medicinally in ancient China and Greece and in medieval Europe, and in Asia, where it seemed to appear from nowhere like mistletoe, it was held almost sacred and carried as a charm and an aphrodisiac. In the Ozarks it served love potions and love divination, a use magical practice keeps: a strand is plucked and thrown back over the shoulder on to its host, and if it has taken hold again by the next day, the love is returned.