#ghost pipe

Some wildflowers hardly look like wildflowers at all. Take the ghost pipe (Monotropa uniflora). It erupts from the earth with white stems and white flowers. It doesn’t have any green leaves. It turns black with age.

This unusual plant – and it is a plant – flowers in dark coniferous forests because it doesn’t need sunlight for photosynthesis. Instead, it has a parasitic relationship with fungi in the soil that in turn get energy from tree roots. Ghost pipes are found across North America and are parasitic on many fungi species. Have you seen these unusual wildflowers in Mount Rainier’s forests? What other wildflowers are you finding in the park?

For updates on what’s blooming where visit https://go.nps.gov/RainierWildflower

Unfamiliar with Mount Rainier’s wildflower species? Check out the wildflower guide at https://go.nps.gov/RainierWildflowerGuide

this was a person who struggled with anxiety, panic attacks, at times psychosis, and who was looking for medicine outside of the realm of orthodox doctors

we are fortunate to have ghost pipe growing on the land here, monotropa uniflora, a widespread but rare parasitic understory plant which produces no chlorophyll of its own and instead subsists off of nutrients siphoned off a host fungal network

the plant itself is a bell shaped flower on a thin, asparagus-like stem, usually all white with an occasional pink center vein

this person heard or read of the purported medicinal properties of ghost pipe, that it was delicate and vulnerable but that its tincture could provide one with distance from pain and panic attacks and allow one to recover and find relief

so they set out into the woods with a jar of vodka and a set of plant pruners - and they returned with their jar of plant matter suspended in alcohol, but blood flowing freely from a gash in their hand, which we rushed to help them patch up

they had slipped on the rock ridge and somehow sheared a shred of glass from the outside of the jar in a way that did not shatter or spill it but did lacerate their palm clean open

with a plant like ghost pipe, the need for reciprocity is elevatedly apparent - harvesting without caretaking can and will decimate an entire population, and reestablishing is terribly difficult due to the complex network of trees and fungi required to even allow their seeds to germinate

so to tromp into a ghost pipe patch and start cutting, without saying hello, without listening to the plant first, without seeing it as anything more than an exploitable resource, is unacceptable, perhaps even to the plant itself

they got their precious purple tincture, but the land got their blood in return