Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora)

The wonderfully strange and ghostly plant above is commonly called Indian Pipe, Ghost Plant or Corpse Plant (Monotropa uniflora) and it has long been number 1 on my list of wildflowers I want to see. So I am sharing this photo with you today with a definite sense of satisfaction since I first encountered these in a forest near Victoria yesterday. Despite their appearance they are NOT a kind of fungi or mushroom. They are a flowering plant that lives from decaying plant matter rather than through the use of chlorophyll and photosynthesis. When I wander around in the forest I am usually looking for something specific because that provides a focus. Yesterday I was hoping to encounter a deer because, though I have seen several this year, I have not yet photographed one. I was also glancing around on the lookout for local orchids and for Indian Pipe, without much hope of seeing the latter because the forest floor where I was walking was quite well lighted and I had always pictured this plant as growing in the dimness beneath a dense rain forest canopy. Suddenly I saw one poking up above the moss. Then I saw the rest and realized I was in the midst of a grove of them, dozens of them all around me.

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ps: I DID see a deer later - but that's tomorrow's photo.