Dodder Cultivation

Cuscuta europaea on a sad Coleus, with flowers and mature fruits.

Dodders (genus Cuscuta) are twining parasitic plants in the morning glory family (Convolvulaceae). Cuscuta plants are holoparasites, which have non-functional scale leaves and have lost the ability to make chlorophyll, and thus are completely dependent upon host plants for all of their nutritional needs. Cuscuta europaea is an annual species that thrives on a wide variety of hosts, and is one of the easiest parasitic plants to cultivate indoors or in a greenhouse.

Cuscuta europaea seeds and one week seedlings.

Dodder has small seeds, and the nearly rootless, filamentous seedlings must attach to a host plant soon after germination, or they will quickly exhaust their resources and die. It seems to be beneficial to scarify the seeds by rubbing them lightly on sandpaper; otherwise germination can be poor. The seeds can be sown on the soil surface next to an appropriate host plant. I've used Coleus hybrids with good results, but C. europaea isn't picky and a wide variety of common garden plants work, including Impatiens, sunflowers and tomatoes. Cuscuta seedlings latch onto smaller, tender shoots more easily than to older host growth, so freshly established Coleus cuttings are a good starting point.

Cuscuta europaea, young seedlings establishing on Coleus.

Only a fairly low percentage of dodder seedlings manage to wrap around a host stem and form haustoria--the nutrient-absorbing connections to host vascular tissues. If successful, the peg-like vestigial root and lower parts of the dodder seedling wither away, while the portion in contact with the host remains alive. The live portion of an establishing seedling spends a week or so as a tiny yellowish ring around the host stem, not putting on much obvious growth, perhaps while the haustoria are working their way into position. After they get organized, though, young dodder plants explode into growth, sending branching stems in every direction and establishing new haustorial connections to their host plant wherever they make contact, and eventually reaching outwards to infest other compatible plants within reach.

Cuscuta europaea, one month old and spreading.

Cuscuta europaea reaches maturity within a month or two of germination, producing clusters of small, pale, non-showy flowers. These are self-pollinating, and almost all of them yield papery fruits containing several viable seeds, even in the absence of any pollination agents. This particular dodder species is short-lived, and begins to slowly decline as the seeds start ripening and the host plant loses vigor. The plants will hang on for six months to a year before dying out completely, assuming they don't kill their host outright, but need to be restarted from seed periodically. Dodder stems trained onto fresh hosts can be severed from the original plant after they have formed haustoria, and these cuttings often seem to be reinvigorated, at least temporarily. Dodders are potential invasives, so old plants with seeds should be disposed of in a way that the seeds will be destroyed or not potentially spread into the environment.

Ironically, C. europaea is itself easy pickings for common greenhouse insect pests like aphids and mealybugs. It's possible to control these with the usual insecticidal soap or appropriate pesticides, but often it seems to make more sense to just start over with a fresh sowing of seeds, given how quickly C. europaea grows. Many aphid species can be controlled with a minute parasitic (technically a parasitoid, since it invariably kills its host. Like Aliens.) wasp, Aphidius spp. Aphidius themselves are sometimes subject to infection with hyperparasite wasps such as Dendrocerus. Parasites on parasites on parasites on parasitic plants on hapless green plants; an appropriate vignette of how the natural world works, to think about during this Darwin Day season.