The dodder is a genus (Cuscuta) of leafless parasites with slender thread-like twining stems. The flowers stand singly in the leaf-axils or form few or many flowered cymose inflorescences; the flowers are sometimes crowded into small heads.
In Cuscuta (Dodder) (q.v.), however, we have an exception.
The union taking place underground, while the bulk of both partners in the symbiosis rises into the air, renders the association a little difficult to see, but there is no doubt that the plants in question do afford each other assistance, forming, as it were, a kind of partnership. The most pronounced case of parasitism, that of Cuscuta, the dodder, which infests particularly clover fields, appears to differ only in degree from those mentioned, for the plant, bare of leaves as it is yet contair.s a little chlorophyll.
Linseed is subject to extensive and detrimental adulterations, resulting not only from careless harvesting and cleaning, whereby seeds of the flax dodder, and other weeds and grasses are mixed with it, but also from the direct admixture of cheaper and inferior oil-seeds, such as wild rape, mustard, sesame, poppy, &c., the latter adulterations being known in trade under the generic name of " buffum."