Question

What is the interaction called between Cuscuta and shoe flower bush?

Answer 1

The association between species is symbiotic, where one organism, the parasite, survives on or in another organism, the host, causing some harm to it.

Complete answer:
First we should know about population interaction to answer this question. Population interactions demonstrate that animals, plants and microbes do not exist in isolation in nature, but interact to form a biological group in different ways. This interaction may be beneficial/positive, detrimental/ harmful, and neutral to one of the species or both. Some of the population interactions are predation, mutualism, competition, parasitism, commensalism, and amensalism.
The interaction between Cuscuta and shoe flower bush is parasitism. Cuscuta is also known as dodder and is a parasitic plant and is a genus of more than 201 species of orange, yellow and sometimes green. In India, it is said as Amar bail. This plant attaches and wraps itself around another plant. The Cuscuta develops haustoria that inject themselves into the host's vascular system if the host provides food beneficial to the dodder. The Cuscuta’s original root in the soil dies then. The Cuscuta is able to grow and bind itself to different plants.

Note: Dodder is a parasitic on a very large variety of plants including a range of horticultural and agricultural crop species. It is an ectoparasite and is known as a non-photosynthetic holoparasitic plant or a plant that is entirely reliant on a host.