''Apodanthes'' is a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of ...

s in the family

Apodanthaceae The family Apodanthaceae comprises about 10 species of endoparasitic herbs. They live in the branches or stems of their hosts (as filaments similar to a fungal mycelium Mycelium (plural mycelia) is a root-like structure of a fungus consistin ...

. It has only one currently accepted species, ''Apodanthes caseariae'', native to Central America and northern South America. It is a

holoparasite An obligate parasite or holoparasite is a parasitic organism that cannot complete its life-cycle without exploiting a suitable host. If an obligate parasite cannot obtain a host it will fail to reproduce. This is opposed to a facultative paras ...

that lives inside plants from the families

Salicaceae The Salicaceae is the willow family of flowering plants. The traditional family (Salicaceae ''sensu stricto'') included the willows, poplar, aspen, and cottonwoods. Genetic studies summarized by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) have greatly ...

and Fabaceae, and emerges only to flower.

References

Monotypic Cucurbitales genera Apodanthaceae Parasitic plants Flora of Central America Flora of northern South America Flora of western South America Flora of Brazil Plants described in 1896 {{Cucurbitales-stub