Andrew Trundlewagon's photos with the keyword: parasite

Plants behaving badly: Beech-drops (Epifagus virginiana) are parasitic plants that grow on the roots of beech trees. They only emerge above ground to flower. Beech-drops lack chlorophyll as they obtain all their nutrients from the host trees with most of their life spent underground attached to the tree root. In this way they can survive in the deep shade of the forest floor. The flowering plants are about 20 to 30 cm tall and look like dead sticks until backlit, when the delicacy of their flowers appears.

A plant behaving badly. This is the one flowered cancer root, or one flowered broomrape (Orobanche uniflora). It is a small parasitic plant that lacks chlorophyl and obtains its nutrients entirely by parasitizing the roots of other plants, notably saxifrages, asters and sedum. This colony was growing by the side of a stream (German Mills Creek) in the East Don Mills ravine parkland in Toronto. It is a member of the Orobanchaceae, or broomrapes, and occurs widely throughout Canada and the US, but is not often seen (this is, in fact, the only time I have seen it). Despite its rather anti-social lifestyle, it made a very pleasant surprise between the early spring ephemerals that are almost finished and the summer wildflowers that have yet to arrive.

Coral root orchid. Coral roots (Corallorhiza) are orchids that, with one exception, make no chlorophyll and live by taking (stealing) nutrients from fungi in the soil (myco-heterotrophy). Most of the plant is below ground, (the coral root) growing in intimate contact with its fungal provider. All that appears above ground is a single leafless shoot with an array of small, rather delicate flowers. Found on the forest floor, park St. Bruno, Quebec.