Cassytha glabella — Edible Plant Database

What to Eat

Edible parts: Fruit

The fruits are eaten fresh and used as flavoring in baking.

Known Hazards

Where to Find It

It is a temperate plant. It grows in heathland particularly coastal and open forest. It eventually kills the host plant. Tasmania Herbarium.

Australia*, Tasmania*,

Countries: Australia

How to Identify

A twining plant. It is without hairs and keeps growing from year to year. The stems are greenish-brown to yellow-orange. Plants have small suckers along the stem which attach to trees. It climbs 1-2 m high and spreads 1-3 m wide. The leaves are very small and scale like. The flowers are very small and white or cream. The fruit have a succulent outer part. There is one seed inside. The fruit are 6-7 mm long. The fruit are edible.

How to Grow

Seeds germinate on the ground but then parasitise trees.

Wikipedia

Source ↗

Cassytha glabella, commonly known as the slender devil's twine, is a common twining plant of the Laurel family, found in many of the moister parts of Australia. A hemi-parasitic climber. The specific epithet glabella is from Latin, referring to the lack of hairs. The fruit are sweet and mucousy to taste. The Devil's Twine (Cassytha pubescens) and Cassytha melantha are similar, but with thicker (and in the case of the former) hairier stems. In 1810, this species first appeared in scientific literature, in the Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae, authored by the prolific Scottish botanist, Robert Brown. Alternate common names include Smooth Cassytha, slender dodder-laurel, tangled dodder-laurel. This and other members of the genus Cassytha are either classified in their own family Cassythaceae or within the laurel family Lauraceae. Two forms are recognized: Cassytha glabella f. dispar, which has more elongated fruit, either pear-shaped (pyriform) or spindle-shaped (fusiform). Cassytha glabella f. glabella, which has more oval fruit. A small twining vine, Cassytha glabella has twining stems which are around 0.5 mm in diameter. The haustoria are less than one millimetre long. The leaves are present in the form of tiny scales. The tiny flowers may form at any time of the year, although peak from November to March in the Sydney region. They appear on a short spike 5 to 7 mm long and are stalkless, yellow or white. The fruit is round; green or yellow, sometimes with red markings, hairless, around 3 to 6 mm in diameter. It is juicy and succulent. The plant begins life when it germinates from the seed in the ground, the vine growing and flailing about before latching onto nearby vegetation. The root then dies and the plant lives by suckering along the stems and branches of plants. Although it resembles the dodders of the genus Cuscuta, it is unrelated.

Notes

There are 15-20 Cassytha species. Sometimes they are in the family Cassythaceae.

Names & Synonyms

Tangled dodder laurel

References (9)

Caton, J.M. & Hardwick, R. J., 2016, Field Guide to Useful Native Plants from Temperate Australia. Harbour Publishing House. p 362
Cherikoff V. & Isaacs, J., The Bush Food Handbook. How to gather, grow, process and cook Australian Wild Foods. Ti Tree Press, Australia p 194, 198
Curtis, W.M., 1993, The Student's Flora of Tasmania. Part 3 St David's Park Publishing, Tasmania, p 597
Dashorst, G.R.M., and Jessop, J.P., 1998, Plants of the Adelaide Plains & Hills. Botanic Gardens of Adelaide and State Herbarium. p 64
Daw, B., Walley, T. & Keighery, G., 2001, Bush Tucker. Plants of the South-West. Department of Conservation and Land Management. Western Australia. p 24
Lazarides, M. & Hince, B., 1993, Handbook of Economic Plants of Australia, CSIRO. p 51
Paczkowska, G. & Chapman, A.R., 2000, The Western Australian Flora. A Descriptive Catalogue. Western Australian Herbarium. p 277
Tasmanian Herbarium Vascular Plants list p 37
Whiting, J. et al, 2004, Tasmania's Natural Flora. Tasmania's Natural Flora Editorial Committee PO Box 194, Ulverstone, Tasmania, Australia 7315 p 198