Parasitic Plant

[FrankenSnyder]

Photoed this one yesterday: Dodder on iceplant. Might be fun to put it on a houseplant. But not on one of my prized CPs.

 

[Tanukimo]

Really cool! I've seen dodder on some plants in the hills near my house but it's not really accessible without scrambling up a hill.

 

[FrankenSnyder]

Thanks @Tanukimo

Spotted more growing in a roadway center divider on California Buckwheat. I am notifying the Conservancy of this occurrence in hope of helping relocate it. I’ve watched some great Youtube vids about this strange plant. Wish I had a more suitable growing space for it myself.

 

[Tanukimo]

Here are some pics of dodder I took from last year at a hiking trail near my house. The closeup ones were just out of reach. Otherwise I would have wanted to try to grow some myself. The orange color is quite distinctive once you've seen it.

 

[FrankenSnyder]

@Tanukimo, I wish you luck finding some you can reach. I saw more Dodder, AKA Vampire Plant, along a trail side; A patch sapping the life out of poison oak. Imagine the fun we could have creating such fascinating vampire gardens around our neighborhoods. As a test grow experiment I wreathed a collected Dodder length around a sweet potato stem. Looks hopeful so far.

 

[bluemax]

'Kinda creepy but cool. I see you are growing a yellow-stemmed form of dodder, Ivan. When I lived in CA I remember seeing a bright orange variety.

 

[FrankenSnyder]

'Kinda creepy but cool. I see you are growing a yellow-stemmed form of dodder, Ivan. When I lived in CA I remember seeing a bright orange variety.

Good eye Mark. That one length I took to grow was yellow-green, because it was shaded. Sadly it failed to attach to the host, but I got a few seed for another try.