Habit: Vine, annual (perennial herb if on perennial host), not in contact with ground, attached to, holoparasitic on host by many small, specialized roots (haustoria) along stem, generally glabrous. Stem: thread-like, +- green, yellow, orange, or +- red. Leaf: 0 or scale-like, alternate, +- 2 mm. Inflorescence: generally cyme, head- to panicle-like (flowers 1), subtended by 0--3 bracts. Flower: bisexual, radial, parts generally in 4s or 5s; calyx generally divided 2/5--3/5, persistent, generally +- cream-white; corolla generally +- white, persistent (withered in fruit) or not, tube cup-shaped to cylindric, bulged or horizontally ridged below lobes or generally not, generally with scales subtending stamens, lobes alternate stamens, erect to reflexed; ovary superior, chambers 2, each 2-ovuled, styles 2, generally free, persistent, stigmas 2, generally spheric, persistent. Fruit: capsule, generally indehiscent to irregularly dehiscent (or circumscissile near base), spheric to ovoid, depressed or not, thickened and/or raised around generally inconspicuous opening between styles or not. Seed: 1--4; coat papillate when hydrated, honeycombed when dry, (rarely neither, with cells +- rectangular, in +- jigsaw-puzzle-like arrangement); embryo generally slender, 1--3-coiled.
Species In Genus: +- 180 species: cosmopolitan, especially warmer regions of western hemisphere and Polynesia. Etymology: (Aramaic, Hebrew; from the verb K-S-Y (Kaph, Shin, Yodh), to cover, from habit) Note: By persistent, withered corolla, fruit may be "capped" (corolla on top of fruit), "surrounded" (fruit at least in part visible, corolla +- loosely around fruit), or "enclosed" (fruit not visible, corolla +- tightly around fruit). Cuscuta pentagona Engelm. excluded.
Jepson eFlora Author: Mihai Costea & Saša Stefanović
Reference: Costea & Stefanovic 2009 Syst Bot 34:570--579
Unabridged Reference: Costea et al. 2005 Brittonia 57:264--272; Costea et al. 2006 Sida 22:151--175, 177--195, 197--207, 209--225; Costea & Stefanovic 2009. Cuscuta jepsonii (Convolvulaceae), an invasive weed or an extinct endemic? Amer J Bot 96:1744--1750; Costea et al. 2009. Untangling the systematics of salt marsh dodders: Cuscuta pacifica a new segregate species from Cuscuta salina (Convolvulaceae). Syst Bot 34:787--795; Costea & Stefanovic. 2009. Molecular phylogeny of Cuscuta californica complex (Convolvulaceae) and a new species from New Mexico and Trans-Pecos. Syst Bot 34:570--579; Costea & Tardif 2006 Canad J Pl Sci 86:293--316
Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)
Key to Cuscuta

List of species Cuscuta approximata Cuscuta brachycalyx Cuscuta californica Cuscuta californica var. apiculata Cuscuta californica var. californica Cuscuta californica var. papillosa Cuscuta campestris Cuscuta cephalanthi Cuscuta denticulata Cuscuta howelliana Cuscuta indecora var. indecora Cuscuta japonica var. formosana Cuscuta jepsonii Cuscuta nevadensis Cuscuta obtusiflora var. glandulosa Cuscuta occidentalis Cuscuta pacifica Cuscuta pacifica var. pacifica Cuscuta pacifica var. papillata Cuscuta reflexa Cuscuta salina Cuscuta suaveolens Cuscuta subinclusa Cuscuta suksdorfii Cuscuta veatchii

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