Question

A)What is cuscuta(Amarbel)?Why is cuscuta called a parasite?
B)All animals depend upon plants for their food’.Justify this statement.

Answer 1

Hint: Cuscuta is a genus of more than 201 species of yellow, orange, (rarely green) parasitic plants also known as Amar bail in India. Formerly treated as the only genus in the Cuscutaceae family, it is now accepted as belonging to the Morning Glory family, Convolvulaceae, on the basis of the work of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group.

Complete answer:
a) CUSCUTA:
Cuscuta is easily recognizable as a green-yellow, leafless, parasitic twining stem that entangles the host plant with numerous branches and draws its nutrition. It does not have chlorophyll and cannot make its own food by photosynthesis. Once attached, the plants live their entire life on the host plant without any attachment to the soil.
Parasites are an incredibly diverse group of organisms living within host cells. They are smaller than their host organism and reproduce faster, causing more damage to the host. They receive all kinds of benefits, such as food and shelter from the host.

The botanical name of the amarbel is Cuscuta reflexa. It's also called the giant dodder.
The Cuscuta plant is called a parasite because it has no chlorophyll and absorbs food material from the host. In this process, the host is deprived of its valuable nutrients.

Cuscuta is a parasitic angiosperm plant. It produces fruit and seeds. Seeds can survive for about 5-7 years and can cause infection in many plants of horticultural importance or are dicotyledonous plants. The plant can grow back from its hometown and cause infection. As a result, the plant literally does not die or, rather, can tide over various unfavorable conditions.

b)Justification
All living organisms need energy for food. Plants can make their own food, but animals can't. Food is essential for all organisms. So, all the animals depend directly or indirectly on the plants for their food.

Green plants are the essential living things that need to be survived to make other organisms survive. Because every other organism's life depends directly or indirectly on green plants, since they supply oxygen that is essential for most organisms to breathe.

In addition, herbivores and even humans consume green plants as food. If they disappear from the earth, herbivores will sequentially extinguish carnivores that consume herbivores, and human beings will also die due to lack of food and oxygen.

Note: The stems and branches of the cuscuta are fleshy, the flowers are small, the fruits are small and the seeds are 2-4.Amarbel is widely used in the treatment of headache, labor pain, bone fracture, fever and rheumatism.