For a year I thought they were litter — kids with silly string destroying a nice plant. Then I thought they were discarded strands of nylon netting from construction projects. Then I noticed them everywhere in the pretty green scrub, lurid and louche. Yucch. I shuddered when I finally realized they were alive.
They must have come from someplace awful, thinks the View, like Australia, or Planet Xenon. They must be invasive here, because they’re so ugly and out-of-place.
They were the nuisance that spoiled great shots. I have hidden them from your View for two years, cropping them out of every shot where they appeared. But yesterday the Muse, Miss Corona Virus, a dame with more curves than a scenic railway, came into the View and demanded I research this Dodder, as he’s called, aka Chaparral Dodder.. The silly string fell from my sore eyes. This stuff ain’t child’s play. It’s evolution.
Invasive? Can be. But note this hillside is next to the fire-lane-trail. Plus, the whole of this ridge, both slopes, for about a quarter of a mile, was nothing but buckwheat; and this was the only dodder. In proportion, the dodder occupied only a small patch of the unnaturally mono-cropped buckwheat.
Meet Cuscuta californica, proud and noble member of the CFP. A relative of morning glory (hence datura?) and also of bindweed. So think clinging vine; but dodder is the only vine in the family that is parasitic.
Dodder hangs like a hammock in the sun all day, claiming, along with the birds and the bees, the upper berths of scrub, the buckwheat canopy, up off the nasty hot ground. Like the pollinators with which it competes (or rather, crowds out) dodder harvests buckwheat’s good things for its own purposes — only it sucks them very, very slowly. All season long, in fact. We know it doesn’t kill the host, it just stomps on its face for a season and really wrecks its sex appeal for said birds and bees. Then, like any annual, dusty old Dodder puts out flowers, sets teeny tiny seeds, and dies back. The host gasps and recovers, while the dodder seeds hop to the ground to sprout on the soil. Once sprouted, they have only days to fish around for another buckwheat, or deerweed, a process the shoots apparently accomplish by following scents and aromas of host plants. Then it grabs hold, and hoists its whole self up like a hobo grabbing hold of a freight car, slowly losing all contact with the ground as it clambers to the top. Amazing.
It seems a golden land always attracts its share of schnorrers. But isn’t old Dodder, itself, a bit golden? Hmmm? [twists pinky in dimple]
The Valley Village View 