Indian Pipe

One of my favorite wildflowers is Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora). After two days of very hard rain in early July, these flowers popped up all over our woods. I had never seen so many Indian Pipes in one place. While Indian Pipes are not rare, neither are they very common. But in mid-July, there were clumps of Indian Pipes wherever I looked.

Indian Pipes are a ghostly translucent white. Each stem bears one flower. Since they have no chlorophyll, they are parasitic and get their nutrients through fungi in the soil.

When they first emerge, the flowers are "nodding" -- facing downward. As the plants mature, the flowers become upright.

A close-up of the flowers.

As the seeds develop, the plants turn black and dry up.

A closely related plant, Pinesap (Monotropa hypopithys) is "uncommon", if not "rare". I've only seen it once -- last summer at Douthat State Park.

Pinesaps are generally yellow-orange. They have multiple flowers per stem.

At first glance, many people think that Indian Pipes are a fungus. They're not. When I was first introduced to these strange little plants in the early 1970s, I was told that they were in the Orchidaceae (orchid family). Like orchids, these plants require specific fungal and plant communities to survive. But my wildflower books of that vintage (Peterson, Newcomb) put them in the Pyrolidaceae (Wintergreen or Pyrola family). Today the Pyrolideae is a subfamily of the Ericaceae (heath family). Some sources have put the Monotropa genus in its own family, Monotropaceae or as the Monotropoideae subfamily in the Ericaceae. Taxonomy has gotten so complicated! Regardless, I have say that I find it difficult to find these plants related to blueberries, mountain laurel, and rhododendron!