This week: Emily Dickinson’s Favorite Flower
Hello!
It’s time to open the mailbag! Recently, a reader sent me a photo of Ghost Pipes (Monotropa uniflora) that she spotted while hiking in the Smoky Mountains. She thought it would be a great newsletter topic; I agreed.
Many mistake Ghost Pipes for fungi, but they are indeed a seed-dispersed flower. They just lack chlorophyll, hence their otherworldly appearance. Wikipedia says there are around 380,000 plants in the world, and only 3,000 don’t use chlorophyll — a fraction of a percentage. So, if not from chlorophyll, how do Ghost Pipes get their nutrients?
They steal it, of course. Their roots extract nutrients from the roots of other plants (like Oaks and Maples) by linking to them through a network of mycorrhizal fungi. This is why you’ll find Ghost Pipes sprouting from the rich environs of the forest floor, and not in someone’s garden.
Ghost Pipes have a single flower on a stem (“uni” and “flora” are identification hints in the botanical name). When Ghost Pipe emerges, its flower head is bowed. As it matures, its flower points forward, then stands fully upright when its seeds are ripe. It is bee-pollinated. It tends to grow in clumps and is under a foot tall, and is native to most of the United States and Canada, except for the Rocky Mountains.
A Pop Culture Plant
A clump of Ghost Pipes famously graced the cover of Emily Dickinson’s first published collection of poems; it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, her favorite flower. But Ghost Pipe may be better known for being Internet famous. If Ghost Pipe is new to you today, you’re guaranteed to see it a few dozen times on Instagram now that I’ve mentioned it.
Interestingly, a team at Penn State University researched the influence of the Internet on Ghost Pipe’s medicinal uses. Historically, it was used by indigenous peoples for a host of maladies, from curing fits to alleviating colds, but was most widely used for pain management by the Eclectics in the mid-1800s. Herbalists picked it up again in the 1970s, but using Ghost Pipe for pain faded away, only to be resurrected in the online era, with practitioners reporting their experiences in blog posts, discussion threads, and on social media for others to find. The researchers’ findings suggest that the internet is an important platform for reviving and creating ethnobotany traditions and practices. You can read the publication here.
If you have a question or topic for the newsletter, send it along!
Elsewhere:
Check out this New York Times article about invasive plants. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s new Uprooted exhibit is prominently featured.
Have a great week,
Julie