AN EXCLUSIVE GROUP ..

It was all of eight years ago that I became aware of and fascinated by the plant known as Dodder.   We were on a long walk along the south Devon coast path between Mill Bay, opposite Salcombe, and Prawle Point when I came across this spectacular looking plant and took the photo you see above.  I got home and checked it out and discovered that dodder (Cuscuta epythymum) aka hellweed or strangle-tare, is a parasitic plant that attaches itself to a host and eventually takes over.

Not only is the appearance of common dodder unusual, though, but so is its lifestyle.  An annual, parasitic plant, in late-spring a slender stem emerges from germinating over-wintered seeds, and entwines itself, always anti-clockwise, around the nearest host plant, providing, of course, that one is within reaching distance.

Common dodder growth at this stage depends entirely on food reserves contained in the seed, for the plant has no green chlorophyll, and therefore cannot photosynthesise. But once the plant is established, the lower part of the stem withers and falls away, leaving the dodder to depend solely on its unfortunate host, from which it takes sugar and other nutrients through suckers that penetrate stem and branches.

Growth is rapid, and it quickly engulfs host and adjacent plants in a tangled cloak of incredibly fine threads, colouring the landscape with a wine-red mantle.

So, armed with this new found discovery I thought it would be a good idea to set up a Facebook group with the intention of seeking out and recording sightings of dodder, which is quite rare in the UK and is seen in a very few places.  I invited a couple of like minded people to join the group when I first set it up and for quite a few years the `membership` remained at three - those two friends and myself as `admin.`

And then about a year ago I had a request from Collin Hadzik in Pennsylvania to join the group, which then made it four.   And a couple of weeks ago I had yet another request, this time from a gentleman named Alex Perez, details about whom are awaited but if he does join then after eight years and counting the worldwide membership of the dodder group will reach an impressive five people!

What might be impressive about that is the probability that it is the least popular group in the entire history of Facebook;  that in itself is something of which to be justly smug. Almost as obscure as Cuscuta epythymum itself.