Nature: Ghost-pipe one of summer's most interesting wildflowers

 

Ghost-pipe springs from forest leaf litter/Jim McCormac

Nature: Ghost-pipe one of summer's most interesting wildflowers

Columbus Dispatch
August 6, 2023

NATURE

Jim McCormac

For most people, the wildflower heydays are in spring. Warming temperatures and plenty of sun, not yet filtered out by dense canopies of leaves, spark an eruption of vernal flora. Bluebells, spring beauties, trilliums, trout lilies, wood poppies and scores of other flowers color the forest floors.

By mid-to-late summer, woodlands are cloaked in deep shade, root zone temperatures are higher, and colorful wildflower palettes are a not-so-distant memory. That’s not to say there aren’t flowers for the finding. The cast of botanical characters tends to be subdued and less flashy than their spring counterparts, though.

I was recently in a large southern Ohio forest, casting about for various interesting summer plants. The temperature was about 85 degrees Fahrenheit with high humidity — seasonally apropos. Those two factors conspire to keep many would-be wildflower seekers holed up in the air conditioning, but braving the heat has its rewards.

While exploring a densely wooded slope, I saw the spectral silhouettes of one of our most interesting summer wildflowers glowing faintly in the gloom of the forest understory. Ghost-pipe! This bizarre plant lacks chlorophyll and has an eerie quality, as if a dead man’s fingers were clawing from the soil. Some people understandably dismiss ghost-pipe (also called Indian pipe) as some sort of fungus.

Ghost-pipe (Monotropa uniflora) is a saprophyte. That’s a two-dollar word referring to a plant or other organism that garners its nourishment from dead or decaying material. On its face, it would seem that ghost-pipes are doing just that. They spring from decomposing leaf litter and the rich humus of forest soil forged by annual layers of fallen plant detritus.

But ghost-pipe nutrition is a bit more specialized than that. The plant creates a dense mat of brittle, flashy roots, which it uses to tap into subterranean fungi. Ghost-pipe roots fuse with certain types of fungi, which are, in turn, living on – and decomposing – leaf litter. By doing so, ghost-pipe avoids the need to harvest sun and produce chlorophyll, as nearly all of our 1,800 or so Ohio native plants must do. Hence the ghostly pallor of the plant, as chlorophyll is what gives plants their green coloration.

It’s fairly easy to overlook ghost-pipes, as a big one might rise to only 9 inches. But they typically produce multiple clumped flowering stems, making plants more conspicuous. The leaves are reduced to tiny scales, and each stem is capped with a single large flower. The bloom is colored like the stem, so at first blush, it can be easy to miss. Look into the flower from above and you’ll see its reproductive parts: a dozen or so pollen-producing stamens surrounding a thick style (the pollen receptor). Occasionally, one finds ghost-pipes with a beautiful rose-purple tinge to the stems.

Most flowering plants require pollinators, and ghost-pipe is no exception. Bumblebees do the heavy lifting. Peak bloom coincides with peak bumblebee numbers and diversity, ensuring plenty of winged vectors to tote pollen to different plants. The luminescent whitish glow of ghost-pipe flowers no doubt helps lure the fuzzy insects.

Ghost-pipe has been found in about two-thirds of Ohio’s 88 counties. It would have historically occurred in all of them, but loss of forested habitats, especially in western Ohio, has made it scarcer. Generally, the larger the woods, the better the odds of stumbling into ghost-pipe. Good local haunts include metro parks such as Battelle Darby, Blendon Woods and Highbanks.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature atjimmccormac.blogspot.com.