Mistletoe is often associated with Christmas, yet native mistletoe is something of an unsung hero when it comes to woodland birds. It provides food, shelter, and nest sites, including for the critically endangered regent honeyeater, but repeated bushfires in recent years have wiped it out from a key breeding area in New South Wales’ Lower […]
Although Haustorium does no longer cover the literature on the use of parasitic plants in medicine It is very striking, however, how the literature on therapeutic uses dominates the literature. Are parasitic plants over-represented simply because their lifestyle suggests special properties? Or are they really special? For further reading see Haustorium 83 […]
James Bradley and Sylvia Mutunda The 3rd 2023 monthly IPPS seminar will be held Wednesday 7 June at 4:00 pm central European time. You can use this website for time zone conversion. The next seminar will take place on 5 July, combined with the IPPS General Assembly. On 7 June we will have the following […]
Introduction: Parasitic plants can damage crop plants and consequently cause yield losses and thus threaten food security. Resource availability (e.g., phosphorus, water) has an important role in the response of crop plants to biotic attacks. However, how the growth of crop plants under parasitism are affected by environmental resource fluctuation is poorly understood. Methods: We […]
Hanan Eizenberg and Ahmet Uludag The 2nd 2023 monthly IPPS seminar will be held Wednesday 3 May at 4:00 pm central European time. You can use this website for time zone conversion. The next seminars will take place on 7 June and 5 July, combined with the IPPS General Assembly. On 3 May we will […]
After a break, in which we had the 16th World Congress on Parasitic Plants in Nairobi, Kenya, the Executive Committee of the IPPS is happy to announce we are resuming our monthly IPPS seminar series, starting Wednesday 5 April. As with the previous series, talks will be every 1st Wednesday of the month at 4:00 […]
Dodders (Cuscuta australis R. Br.) are holo-parasitic stem angiosperms with an extensive host range that have significant ecological and economic potential impact on the ecosystem and the agricultural system. However, how the host plant responds to this biotic stress remains mostly unexplored. To identify the defense-related genes and the pathways in white clover (Trifolium repens […]
A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) and McGill University in Canada discovered strong adhesive properties of white-berry mistletoe. The mistletoe berry’s flexible fibers adhere to both skin and cartilage as well as to various synthetic materials and could find application in many fields, such as wound sealant […]
Orobanche minor, small broomrape, is found throughout much of East Africa and parasitizes a diversity of hosts. Of particular interest in Rwanda is its parasitism of Peucedanum linderi, wild celery, a main food of mountain gorillas. Small broomrape parasitizing wild celery in a garden of plants favored by mountain gorillas. The broomrape is just above […]
Parasitic plants have received little attention in Rwanda. Two species of Striga are known and cause considerable crop loss in some regions. Striga hermonthica occurs in the southern part of the country where it has been reported to damage grains. I have seen S. asiatica in the vicinity of the village of Mbyo where families […]