Cassytha glabella

Cassytha glabella is a hemiparasitic twining vine of the Lauraceae family with very slender, smooth, yellowish-green to orange thread-like stems 0.5-1 mm thick that climb and ramify over host shrubs, attaching by small disc-like haustoria that penetrate the host's stems and tap its vascular tissue. Leaves are reduced to minute, scale-like, scattered triangular bracts less than 1 mm long along the stems. The inflorescences are small axillary spikes or short racemes 5-15 mm long bearing a few sessile flowers, each with six tiny tepals in two whorls, the outer three smaller than the inner; the perianth is glabrous, distinguishing it from the related hairier C. pubescens. Stamens are nine, in three whorls, with the innermost often staminodial. The fruit is a small succulent globose drupe 4-7 mm in diameter, green ripening to translucent whitish or pale orange, enclosed by the persistent enlarged perianth tube. Native and widespread across temperate and subtropical Australia and New Zealand, it grows in heathland, woodland margins and coastal scrub, parasitising a wide variety of low woody hosts.