I learned something new! I love it when that happens.
In the last few months I moved from just below to Fall Line to deep in the Piedmont. As a result the collection of counties I am responsible for have gotten hillier, wetter, and slightly cooler. I’m seeing a different suite of flora and fauna than before, including some things that haven’t previously been on my radar.
A bowshot from National Forest land in the high hills of North Georgia, something caught my eye beneath the white pines, oaks, beeches, and maples. Small white stalks rose from the leaf litter, curling over at the top with a petaled capsule like a lamp post for gnomes. I snapped some photos so I could look up what kind of fungus this was when I got home.
Monotropa uniflora is known by several common names, including ghost plant, Indian pipe, ghost pipe, or corpse plant. It was much more interesting than I gave it credit for. For starters, it isn’t a fungus; it’s a plant in the heather family. Instead of spraying spores to reproduce, ghost pipe requires native bees to visit its flower and carry its pollen. Unlike heather (and most plants), ghost pipe doesn’t produce chlorophyll, so it can’t use sunlight to make energy. So how does it live?
That’s the next interesting bit. There are many fungi that engage in mutualistic association with plants. These fungi, known as mycorrhizae, colonize the roots of plants. They assist the plant in collecting water or nutrients, and collect carbohydrates created in the plant’s chlorophyll factories above. The ghost pipe is a parasite of certain mycorrhizal fungi. This is a switch; usually a fungus parasitizes plants. But we have a plant stealing sugar from a fungus that said fungus “traded” from a tree that produced that energy in the sunlit canopy 80 feet above. Thus, it can grow in the densest, darkest forests. Ghost pipe pops quickly up after a rain, and flowers in early summer to autumn; I was fortunate to have wandered the woods at just the right time to see them.
Curiosity is an important trait for any aspiring naturalist. Knowledge can be gained by seeking answers, but curiosity is the driver.
Towards the Moon or To the Sun 