Indian pipes: oddities of the plant world.Ghost pipe - fs.fed.usIndian pipe: pictures, flowers, leaves and identification.

A mushroom is not a mushroom.The Michigan State University Extension lawn and garden hotline gets questions about many gardening topics.Some of the strangest questions are stimulated by a quiet walk in the woods or a park where people encounter strange plants.

A plant can make its own food.There is a green substance in the leaves that appears green.The chemical equation for photosynthesis is the source of the oxygen we breathe, and the chlorophyll in the leaf is synonymous with life on earth.

One might ask if the plant is really a plant or if it is just a collection of plants.You may be surprised by the answer.Indian pipes, ghost plant and corpse plant, Monotropa uniflora are kind of outliers in the plant kingdom.The lack of chlorophyll in this plant makes life happen by networking with mycorrhizae and the roots of plants that are conducting photosynthesis.These plants help their root relationship with the fungi that are connected to and fed by the green plant.Excellent!

The short-in-stature plant has a single bloom on a stem and leaves that are all white.M. uniflora is a relative of the common blueberry, which has a very similar shaped bloom.It is possible to grow in the dark area of a woodlot.The root zone of oak woodlots is where I usually find this plant, but it is also found under maples.

You might think that this is cheating the system, but some sources claim that the tree that is busy making the food is not guilty.The mycorrhizae fungi are beneficial to the trees, according to most of the literature.It is like the distant third cousins living in the apartment next door who drive a Ferrari and look really cool, but don't ask for much.I wish I could do that.

There are about 3000 non-photosynthetic plants in the world.Who would have thought?It's a good idea to watch for this strange adaptation of nature on your next walk through the woodlot.

Visit www.migarden.msu.edu for more information on a wide variety of smart gardening topics.

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