In Mother Russia, the plants smell YOU!

Set your "is this psychology?" meters to "barely." Researchers at Penn State have been studying a parasitic weed that appears to be attracted the scent of its prey. For those of you who don't follow "intelligent botany," apparently the plant is called the "dodder," likely because of the way it dods.

(from AP)...the [potentially high] researchers led by Consuelo M. De Moraes found that if they placed tomato plants near a germinating dodder, the parasite headed for the tomato 80 percent of the time.

And when they put scent chemicals from a tomato on rubber, 73 percent of the dodder seedlings headed that way.

[snip]

Co-author Mark C. Mescher added, "One of the interesting things we found was that the plants make choices."

When they gave the dodder seedlings a choice between a tomato plant and a wheat plant, they preferred the tomato.

Despite the upcoming November elections, the authors declined to comment on the dodders' political affiliations, though I suspect that they'd prefer the green party. Oy.