Native. Annual. Propagates by seeds.

Time of bloom: July to September.

Seed-time: August to October.

Range: Nova Scotia to Manitoba, southward to the Gulf of Mexico.

Habitat: Moist shady places; low grounds, meadows, waste places.

This species is probably the most widely known of its tribe. Like the Field Dodder, it seems indifferent as to its hosts and, "Like a living skein enlacing, Coiling, climbing, turning, chasing," will embrace anything from a tall New England aster to an onion, or even some shrubby plants, such as the willows, and it is a high climber.

Stems deep yellow to orange, rather coarse. Flowers very numerous, in dense clusters; corolla bell-shaped, waxen white, and its five lobes, as well as those of the calyx, rounded instead of pointed, the scales within the tubes thickly fringed at summit, more sparingly at the sides; stamens exserted. Capsules globose or short-pointed ovoid. Seeds comparatively rather large. (Fig. 227.)

Wherever the Common Dodder attacks cultivated plants, both it and they should be treated with scythe and fire before any seed ripens.