PARASITIC PLANTS are plants which grow on other plants, and derive subsistence from their juices; the plants which live parasitically on animal tissues being generally called entophytes (q although the distinction between these terms is not always pre served. Epiphytes (q.v.) differ from parasitical plants in not subsisting on the juices of the plant which supports them but merely on decayed portions of-its bark, etc., or draw ing all their nourishment from the air. Parasitical plants arc numerous and very various; the greater number, however, and the most important, being small fungi, as rust, brand, bunt, smut, etc., the minute spores of which are supposed, in some cases, to circulate through the juices of the plants which they attack. Concerning. some minute fungi, as the mildews, it is doubted if they are, truly parasitical, or if their attacks are not always preceded by some measure of decay. But among parasitic plants are not a few phancro gamous plants, some of which have green leaves; and some are even shrubby, as the mistletoe, loranthus, etc.; whilst the greater number have brown scales instead of leaves;
as dodder, broom-rape, lathrwa, etc., and the whole of that remarkable order or class of plants called u hkanthece or rhizoyens, of which the genus raj/eail is distinguished above all oilier plants for the magnitude of its flowers. Some parasitic plants, as the species of dodder, begin their existence by independent growth from the ground; but when they have found suitable plants to take hold of and prey on, the connection with the ground ceases. Not a few, as broom-rape and ladurea, are root-parasites, generally attaching themselves to the roots of trees or shrubs; whilst some, as the eyebright (eupkrasia einalis), yellow rattle (rhinanthus erista ,qalli), cow-wheat Onetampyrunt arrow), etc., are parasitical only occasionally and partially, and are chiefly found on neglected grass lands. Root-parasites generally attach themselves by means of tittle tubercles, which bury themselves under the bark.