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.

Hydnora is a parasitic plant that spends nearly its entire life hidden beneath the soil. It lacks leaves and chlorophyll, relying completely on host plants for water and nutrients. Only its bizarre ...

Balanophora shed one third of its genes as it evolved into a very streamlined parasitic plant. Balanophora is a parasitic plant found in tropical and temperate regions in Asia and tropical Africa and ...

Plants may not seem like they live the most exciting lives, but two new papers published this week point to different types ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A macro photograph of a cluster of mushroom-like plants on the forest floor against a mossy backdrop. These are Balanophora ...

Parasitic weeds are ruthless freeloaders, stealing nutrients from crops and devastating harvests. But what if farmers could trick these invaders into self-destructing? Scientists at UC Riverside think ...

Some plants bend the rules of plant life so far that they barely resemble plants at all. Balanophora is one of them — a parasite that lives underground, lacks chlorophyll, and in some cases reproduces ...

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 ...

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has announced that a rare parasitic plant resurfaced after it hadn't been seen for 44 years. The newly rediscovered plant was found in Manitowoc ...