| 词源 |
choke’em. A colorful popular name in the western United States for dodder, a plant of the genus Cuscuta, because of its parasitic effect on host plants: it literally chokes or smothers them to death. Few plants can match dodder’s colorful deroga- tory names. The sprawling, yellow, threadlike plants are also called “beggarweed,” “devil’s guts,” “hairybird,” “hellweed,” “robber vine,” “strangle-weed,” “tangle-gut,” “love-in-a-tangle,” and “witch shoelaces.” |