Greetings fellow Foxies,
Dodder Laurel (family Cassytha) is a good honest parasite that doesn’t hide its intentions.
Unlike hemiparasites like mistletoe, quandong, sandalwood, Leptomeria, and Christmas tree, it is a stem holoparasite that gets all its fixed carbon from its host. It germinates in the soil but has suckers on its stems that tap into the conducting vessels in stems of their host. Plants have numerous thin twining stems with almost no leaves that form a mat on their host. Like many plant parasites they are pale green, have minute flowers, and forms a fruit that birds and animals eat to distribute them.
Dodder laurels are quite common on Drummond’s mallee in Candy Block yellow sand, and I found one on a fallen sheoak in Foxes Lair. Different species I think.
A senior Parks and Wildlife Service officer questioned the sanity of anyone interested in dodder laurel, but he will eat his words when he reads this link on its health benefits.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
This issue is devoted to Foxes Lair triggerplants that mostly flower in October, and which have a fascinating method of pollination.
The male (anther) and female (pistil) parts occur side by side on a spring loaded strap called the trigger.
When an insect lands in the right place in the flower the trigger springs down on its back depositing pollen on its back and pollinating the pistil with pollen from another plant. Images below show the stages in our largest triggerplant Stylidium schoenoides or ‘Cowkick’ (mean plant!).
But being beaten up is not the only problem for insects. Apparently many triggerplants have sticky flower undersides that like sundews, trap insects to provide nutrients for the plants.
For more information see this site.
Triggerplant species in Foxes Lair are in this pdf

Stylidium amoenum Lilac Triggerplant) is worth seeing on the Banksia Walk near the water tank, as are the delicate spreading Stylidium pingrupensis plants on the Valley Walk that are one of the last flowers left after spring.
Look closely and you will see that they are micro stilt plants that have raised crowns to protect them from the hot ground. a real oddity is the attractive purplish pink Stylidium leptophyllum Needle-leaved triggerplants as there is only one plant in Foxes Lair on the right opposite the mallees as you enter from Williams Road. Watch for pink tape.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
                                    A hemiparasitic plant is one that looks normal but parasitises others. I know some humans like that!
Mistletoes are hemiparasites that grow on eucalypt and acacia branches.
The beautiful Christmas tree Nuytsia floribunda is a hemiparasite that used special organs on their roots called haustoria to tap into the sap of host plants. In the 1960’s they would cause short circuits in underground power cables until resistant cables were developed.
In Foxes Lair common hemiparasites are the quandongs. In low rainfall areas, Western quandong Santalum acuminatum is a small tree that produces edible nuts covered by a red vitamin C-rich rind that makes wonderful jam. In Foxes Lair it occurs as clumps of small shrubs on sandy granitic soil that must spread by roots as they don’t form fruit.
Australian Sandalwood Santalum spicatum doesn’t occur naturally in Foxes Lair but you can see ones that Pat Rose planted at the Granite walk car park with their jam acacia hosts. They have tasty nuts like macadamias but you have to be fast to beat Jess to the annual harvest.
Most common and on lateritic soils is the attractive weeping shrub bitter quandong, Santalum murryanum that alas has inedible fruit.
Olax benthamiana is another hemiparasite that is flowering now and was difficult to find on gravelly soils before the 2009 fire. It is much more common now, presumably adapted to germinate with its acacia and melaleuca shrub hosts.
Olax and quandongs have bell-shaped root haustoria that attach to the host root and drill into it to connect to the water bearing xylem vessels.  

Greetings fellow Foxies,

                                       If you cast your eyes upwards in Foxes lair, you will see lovely red Mistletoe flowers.

Ah Mistletoe, the flower of love, dedicated to the goddess Athena, and placed above doors at Christmas and where people who meet there must kiss. If you have a hankering for osculation, arrange to meet the intended person below a Mistletoe infected jam tree that adjoins the top of the loop that contains the Granite Walk picnic tables.

Now that you are fired up I mention that Mistletoe is a stem hemiparasite that can kill its host, and the name literally means ‘dung-on-a-twig’. This because Mistletoe produces a berry that is eaten by the Mistletoe bird, which in turn straddles branches to deposit  its dropping containing the seed on the branch. When the seed germinates, the seedling produces a connection like a vegetative placenta that enables it to tap into the host’s sap.
Dodder laurel is also a stem parasite, but is a holoparasite.

Mistletoe berries are a bush tucker that are sweet but so sticky that they the flesh can't be separated from the seed; this helps the seeds to stick on branches after passing through whatever eats them.
This fabulous blog shows that mistletoes are an integral part of the bush. Their fruit is food for several birds and animals, and they do not necessarily kill their host.