LucasLand
The Wildflowers
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The Wildflowers |
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Ghosts of Summer's WoodsThere's something eerie about seeing a cluster of Indian pipes, heads downturned, on a warm summer day. Ghostly and greenless, they remind one more of mushrooms than of the herbs they are. Their white flesh is unexpected and freakish, especially when you realize that they are wildflowers and not some oddly formed fungus. Because of their unusual appearance, Indians pipes are once seen, never forgotten. I can remember finding them as a child on Nantucket Island and being told their name. That, the daisy, black-eyed susan, and violet were probably the only wildflowers I could name till well into adulthood.
Indian pipes are white or bluish-white (rarely pink or red), almost leafless plants bearing a single five-petaled flower that, when young, faces the earth. The shape of the plant resembles a clay pipe whose stem has been stuck in the earth, and the flower is not unlike the bowl. This albino of the flowering plant world is, surprisingly, somewhat closely related to the dogwoods, heaths, and even the evergreen laurels and rhododendrons. However, to look at its almost leafless white stalk and its plain white fleshy flower, one would be hard pressed to imagine similarities with those of chlorophyllous plants. The Indian pipe is a member of a tiny clan of only three or four species. Only it and pinesap are found in North America; another inhabits such far-away places as Japan and the Himalayas -- where our own Indian pipe may also be found. Another, called bird's nest, is found in Britain and Europe. Indian pipes are one of our few native wildflowers that might be called transcontinental, too, for they may be found from Maine to Florida, and from Washington to California, right down to and into Mexico. They also range across southern Canada and into Alaska. In most areas they appear in mid-summer. Scientists call it Monotropa uniflora, meaning ``once-turned'' and ``single-flowered.'' ``Once-turned'' refers to the fact that the flowers, which face the ground early in their life, turn straight upward once they begin producing seeds (though you'd think the plant would be straight first and bent second, in order to spill out the seeds). Monotropa is in turn a member of the Wintergreen family (Pyrolaceae), a small clan of only 10 genera in North American, their chief habitat. They include the equally unusual pine-drops and beech-drops -- which, not surprisingly, live near pine and beech trees. The Saprophytic Plant The Indian pipe is strange not only in appearance, but in habit. It's a saprophyte (from the Greek, ``rotten plant''), living chiefly on the decaying roots of other plants, particularly trees. Indian pipes are most often found near a dead stump in deep woods, although they will sometimes pop up in a lawn near dead tree roots. They favor beech woods, but will live in others, and it is said that the best time to find them is after a heavy, soaking midsummer rain. Some botanists believe that the roots, working in symbiotic conjunction with certain soil fungi such as mushrooms, also obtain food from live tree roots, which would make the plant a parasite as well as a saprophyte. If this is true, the Indian pipe certainly has a small enough appetite that it can do no harm to large trees, most of whose roots are well beyond its reach. Since the plant obtains all the nutrients it needs from other plants, it requires neither leaves nor chlorophyll, the factories and the chemical employed by most plants in using sunlight to create carbohydrates for food. In the long process of evolution, it lost both -- with only vestiges of leaves remaining in the form of white, scale-like appendages on the stems. The plant can't be picked for display -- not that anyone would want it as a decoration -- because its flesh turns black when cut or even bruised. It also oozes a clear, gelatinous substance when picked or wounded. Such unattractive characteristics have earned the Indian pipe some unflattering names, like ghost flower, corpse plant, and American iceplant. Another is pretty: fairy-smoke. ``This curious herb well deserves its name of corpse plant, so like is it to the general bluish waxy appearance of the dead,'' wrote Dr. Charles F. Millspaugh. ``Then, too, it is cool and clammy to the touch, and rapidly decomposes and turns black even when carefully handled.'' ``It is the weirdest flower that grows, so palpably ghastly that we feel almost a cheerful satisfaction in the perfection of its performance and our own responsive thrill, just as we do in a good ghost story,'' said Alice Morse Earle. For Bright Eyes Its use as a medicine, first by American Indians and later by the white man, has earned it other names. Indians employed it as an eye lotion -- whence the name, eyebright -- as well as for colds and fevers. Americans of the last century treated spasms, fainting spells, and nervous conditions with it -- thus, the names convulsionroot, fitroot, and convulsionweed. Mixed with fennel, it was once also used as a douche. A Dr. R. E. Kunze, writing more than a century ago in The Botanical Gazette, told this story: ``Fourteen years ago -- it was in the early part of July -- I went woodcock-shooting with two friends, near Hackensack, N.J., and while taking some luncheon in a beech grove along the course of Saddle River, I found a large patch of ground literally covered with Monotropa uniflora in full bloom; it covered a space some five feet wide by nine feet long, a beautiful sight of snow-white stems and nodding flowers. Being in need of some just then, I proceeded to fill my game-bag; and to the question, what it was used for, answered: 'Good for sore eyes'; little thinking that the party addressed was suffering from a chronic inflammation of the eye-lids, the edges of which had a very fiery-red appearance. No sooner said than he proceeded to take in his game-bag a supply also, and he made very good use of it, as I ascertained afterwards. His inflamed lids were entirely cured in four weeks' time, and he has had no further trouble since, by applying the fresh juice of the stems he obtained while it lasted.'' Whose Pipe? Its common name comes, of course, from the shape of the plant and probably from the fact that it was first known as an Indian herb. However, naturalist F. Schuyler Mathews disliked the name. ``Why should it have been named Indian pipe?'' he wondered. ``It occurred to me once, when I was climbing the slopes of South Mountain in the Catskills and came across a pretty group of the ghostly Indian pipes, that they were wrongly named; they should have been called the Pipes of Hudson's Crew. Those of us who have seen the ghostly crew in (Washington Irving's) Rip Van Winkle can easily imagine the gnomelike creatures smoking pale pipes like these.'' Perhaps Mathews didn't know that the plant has, appropriately enough, also been called Dutchman's pipe. While the Indian pipe produces seeds, these shouldn't be expected to produce flowering plants unless conditions are just right. Needless to say, establishing Indian pipe on your property is difficult. It must have the conditions it wants -- including the decaying matter it feeds on and the fungus with which it probably co-exists. Clarence and Eleanor Birdseye (yes, the frozen foods folks) wrote a book, Growing Woodland Plants, in which they said it's virtually impossible to transplant because its delicate root system is intermixed with the humus and other decaying material in the ground. One can try by digging up a big shovelful from soaking-wet ground, and moving it to a hole lined with wood compost, they said. However, even if it succeeds and reappears the next year, odds are such tamed Indian pipes won't have the charm they do in the wild. Bad Press The Indian pipe has gotten some bad reviews from nature writers who prefer showier plants. Explaining its colorless and parasitic qualities, Neltje Blanchan wrote a lengthy attack, including: ``No wonder this degenerate hangs its head; no wonder it grows black with shame on being picked, as if its wickedness were only just then discovered... To one who can read the faces of flowers, as it were, it stands a branded sinner.'' However, a 19th Century poet named Mary Thacher Higginson offered the following pleasant description of these unusual plants:
From a wicked ``degenerate'' to saintly nun: such are the extremes of the human imagination. Copyright © 1993 Ragged Mountain Press/McGraw-Hill.
MEDICINAL USE : The
plant is rarely used in the present day. The juice of the plant used alone or
combined with water helps ophthalmic inflammation, ulcers, gonorrhoea, and
inflammation and ulceration of the bladder. Because of the Salicylic acid, the
base of asprin, M. unifora is considered a pain reliever. An infusion has been
used for sore, tired swollen eyes. A tea is made from equal parts juice of
Indian pipe and fennel seed. Add the infusion of Indian pipe to douche to help
ease vaginal irritations.
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