“The Pitcher Plant, which is found in soggy marshes, eats insects, too,” he went on; “only it manages in a different way. Its leaves are shaped like vases or pitchers, and are usually half filled with water; its flowers are reddish purple in color, easily deceiving the flies into thinking they are meat. The insects are attracted also by the sweet fluid, which is on the edge of the ‘pitcher,’ and crawl or slide down the slippery hairs which line the upper part. “Once down, the bristly hairs prevent them from climbing back, and they are drowned in the water. The plant eats the soup which their bodies make. The form of Pitcher Plant which grows in the western states has vases large enough to drown small birds and field mice.” “It isn’t a pretty story,” commented Mary Frances. “Not a bit,” agreed Eleanor. “It would make us ashamed, wouldn’t it, Jack,” Bouncing Bet was speaking, “if anybody but Mother Nature had invented that way of keeping things moving?” “She must have had good reason,” replied Jack. CHAPTER XLV UNINVITED GUESTS “SO much, then, for the disrespectable murderer branch of the family,” he continued. “Now I will tell you about some of our thieves. We don’t approve of them any more than you would approve of a cousin who turned out to be a thief, but—well, I shall begin by telling you about— DODDER No plant would invite such a miserable pauper as a visitor. It’s worse than any beggar you have ever known, for a beggar at least digests his own food. Not so with dodder. It is too lazy to do even that! It has therefore, no leaves. It doesn’t need them. It starts out as an honest plant baby, but soon “goes wrong,” reaching out long tendrils by which it takes hold of any convenient plant neighbor. It sends little leg-like suckers down into the stem of this plant neighbor. It lets go of the earth with its roots, and drinks the life-blood, or sap, of its host, the plant on which it has seized hold. The disgracefully lazy dodder does no work at all except to make flowers and seeds. The flowers are tiny, star-shaped, of a yellowish, greenish or white color, and each flower makes four seeds to go on to make more thieving plant babies! “Isn’t it disgraceful!” exclaimed Bet. “Jack and I never want to associate with plants that murder and steal——” “Not if we can help it,” said Jack, “we don’t.” “You’ll be sorry,” he went on, “to learn that Indian pipes, too, are uninvited guests, living on food in other plant roots.” “Oh,” said Mary Frances regretfully, “I always thought them so pretty!” “Well, they are pretty, and dodder, even, is pretty in a way, because of its yellow color, but both are— PARASITE PLANTS Parasite means “eating at another’s table.” Parasite plants are those which fasten upon other plants and steal their food.