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Chaparral Dodder, Cuscata californica, Poway, California

4,415 views · Published 6 September 2012 · 4:08 · Indexed 27 September 2026

Channel: Melvin Wei · 2012 · Science & Technology

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This video begins with two clips from my first YouTube hike on an easy Veteran's Trail in Carlsbad, California; everything after that is from my recent hike in Poway, California. I noticed what looked like a tangled mass of orange dead straw on top of what I didn't even know was California buckwheat at the time. I thought that the orange straw was a byproduct of the buckwheat...

It wasn't until much later that I discovered the concept of dodder online. Dodder are parasitic plants (vines) that take on the appearance of dried spaghetti because they lack or have very little chlorophyll; most species of dodder almost completely lack chlorophyll, of course, because they tap into the trunks and stems of their host plants via modified roots called haustoria (as in mistletoe) for water and nutrients! The leaves on dodder have, through millions of years, evolved to become almost nonexistent, having been reduced to tiny invisible scales on the surface of the stems! There are an estimated 150+ species of dodder worldwide, with less diversity as one leaves the tropics and goes into colder temperate zones such as Europe.

Chaparral dodder, or California dodder, is a common species in the Western United States. It looks orange or yellow, but I suppose the coloration could depend on seasonal factors (orange in last spring, yellow in late summer?) and the nutritional content of the host plant (orange for California buckwheat, yellow for laurel sumac?). In some parts of the video you can see tiny flowers along the vines, as well as insect pollinators crawling on the chaparral dodder. It is said to have tiny fruits, presumably in the fall, that have the same color as the dodder stems.

Dodder seeds sprout on the surface of the soil, and start growing towards nearby plants based on the detection of volatile organic compounds released by host plants. It has to reach a host plant within 5-10 days, or the seedling will die after exhausting its seed reserves. Dodder sprouts with vestigal cotyledons (those first two big leaves that come out of most seeds). Once the dodder reaches a host and burrows in with its first haustorium, the parasitism begins and the dodder's original ground root dies off. A single chaparral dodder plant can infest multiple hosts, as it is a climbing vine that probes in all directions. It is estimated that the average chaparral dodder, if unraveled, would stretch for almost 1 kilometer.

Dodders are a huge problem for the agricultural world. Infestations are extremely hard to remove: if you rip off all the vines, the haustoria inside the stems of the host plants can regenerate into full plants! Farmers are advised to plant non-host plants at the sites of infestation for several YEARS before normal growing can resume.

Most host plants must have genetic variations to withstand the infestations from dodder haustoria, or this species would have taken over the world long ago...

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