Editor's note: Throughout the growing season, Mike Hogan, OSU Extension Educator for Agriculture & Natural Resources in Franklin County, will answer gardening questions submitted by Dispatch readers.

A dodder plant begins its life looking like a tapeworm. The tiny plant, which will never grow leaves or roots, elongates in a spindly spiral. Round and round it swirls, searching for a host plant.

About 4,000-5,000 parasitic plant species exist. Among these, dodders (Cuscuta, Convolvulaceae) are distributed worldwide. Compared with normal autotrophic plants, they have a unique morphology - they ...

The plant genus Cuscuta consists of more than 200 species that can be found almost all over the world. The parasites, known as dodder, but also called wizard's net, devil's hair or strangleweed, feed ...

Dodder is an obligate parasite of certain plants. This unusual member of the morning glory family is also known as “Angel’s Hair” and “Strangle Weed.” Like Indian pipe, another parasitic plant, Dodder ...

Jim Westwood, professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science, examines dodder, a parasitic plant with a covert weaponry system. Research at Virginia Tech and Penn State that has revealed ...

Parasitic dodders use outgrowths called haustoria to leech water and nutrients from their host plants. Jingxiong Zhang, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Parasitic ...

Most plants produce flowers when their leaves detect environmental cues that indicate the time is right. Parasitic dodder plants cheat. These plants don’t have leaves or roots of their own. Instead, ...

One of my traveler friends sent me a photo of her flowers invaded by a strange, almost alien-type growth. A yellow, spaghetti-like plant called dodder seemed to come from nowhere and entangled her ...

A plant nursery had sold seeds and seedlings that could be contaminated with a parasitic vine. Aberfeldy Nurseries said it had sold 44 packets of imported seeds, which may contain the dodder parasite, ...