Photo © Copyright 2005 by Jim Jung and licensors. All rights reserved.

Indian Pipes

According to folklore these flowers appear wherever an Indian knocked the ashes from his pipe - hence the name. The truth is even more bizarre.

The odd little flowers that Monotropa uniflora sends up in the fall are the surface evidence of one of a small group of highly specialized plants that make their living parasitizing their more conventional brethren. The plant itself is a pale bundle of tissue that envelops the roots of its host plant and sucks all of its nourishment from its host.

Since it gains all of its nourishment from its host plant Indian Pipe has no need of chlorophyll and is therefore colorless. The vestigial leaves on the flower stem are the only clue that this species once had a normal life as a green plant. In fact the only clue that it is a plant are the functional flowers which it uses to attract pollinators and set seed - although how the seeds are dispersed, how they find their host plant and how they establish themselves on their host once found are still mysteries.

For more about Indian Pipes and their relatives, Pinesap, visit Ghost Flowers in our Feature Archive.

Suggest a link! Send suggestions to Webmaster