"Late in summer we might note the tangled golden threads and close white flower-clusters of the dodder. If we try to trace the source of these twisted stems, which the Creoles know as 'angels' hair', we discover that they are fastened to the bark of the shrub or plant about which they are twining by means of small suckers; but nowhere can we find any connection with the earth, all their nourishment being extracted from the plant to which they are adhering. Originally this curious herb sprang from the ground which succoured it until it succeeded in attaching itself to some plant; having accomplished this it severed all connection with mother-earth by the withering away or snapping off of the stem below."  (from 'How to Know the Wild Flowers' by Mrs William Starr Dana, Scribners 1893 USA.)

                  He who finds the root of the dodder 'will become possessed
                  of boundless wealth and of  the power of invisibility.'
                 (George Watt 1883)