A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words 1083 entries

broomrape

BROOM-rape
A parasitic plant with no chlorophyll at all — a spike of hooded flowers in brown, cream, or purple pushing straight out of the ground with nothing green anywhere on it, drawing everything it needs through a swollen attachment on the roots of a host. The leaves are reduced to scales. Above ground it exists only to flower and set seed, and the seeds are like dust.
Etymology
A partial translation of the medieval Latin name rapum genistae, the turnip of the broom, for the tuber-like swelling the plant forms on the roots of broom and gorse. Rapum is Latin for turnip and is the same word behind rapeseed; it has nothing to do with the other English word spelled that way.
Notes
The seeds can lie in soil for years and germinate only on a chemical cue. Some species will respond to almost any root and others only to one host, and the specificity is written into which molecules they answer. It is a seed that waits underground for a particular smell.
ecology flora Greek Latin
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