Dodder
Cuscuta epithymum
Family · Convolvulaceae · Harmless
The plant that looks like a tangle of red thread thrown over a gorse or a thyme. It has no leaves, no roots and no chlorophyll: it lives clamped to another plant and sucks its sap.
Scrubland · Fields and pasture · Uplands · Dunes and sand
Also known asclover dodder, hellweed, devil's guts
How to tell it
Fine reddish or orange threads coiled in a spiral round the host plant's stems, without a single leaf. Where it touches the host it forms haustoria, small calluses through which it feeds. Minute white or pinkish flowers in clusters along the thread.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
It had traditional medicinal use as an infusion, and is today a serious agricultural pest in alfalfa and clover. It matters as a field lesson: it shows a plant can give up leaves, roots and photosynthesis and still be a flowering plant.