adjective
- of or relating to a parasitic plant that depends entirely on its host for nutrition and cannot photosynthesize or survive independently
Usage: biology; botany
Examples
- Dodder is a holoparasitic plant that wraps around its host and extracts all its nutrients.
- Unlike hemiparasitic plants, holoparasitic species have no chlorophyll and cannot produce their own food.
- The holoparasitic mistletoe depends completely on its host tree for survival.
- Holoparasitic plants have lost the ability to photosynthesize over evolutionary time.
- Rafflesia is a holoparasitic flowering plant found in Southeast Asian rainforests.