Common Name:   Indian Pipe

Scientific Name:  Monotropa uniflora

Other Names:   Corpse Plant, Convulsion Root, Fits Root

Indian pipe is a small heterotrophic (non-photosynthetic since it has no chlorophyll) plant with a translucent stem covered with small scale-like leaves.  It has a single nodding flower that is white when young, aging to pink and then black.  The name presumably derives from the inverted pipe-like shape of the flower.

Potpourri:   The Indian Pipe lacks the ability to make its own food so that it has evolved to be parasitic to a fungus.  The fungus (of the Russula  or  Lactarius species) which doesn't make it own food either, derives its nutrients from a photosynthetic plant in a mychorrhizal (pronounced my-cor-EEZ-al) relationship. The fungus returns  essential minerals to the host plant and helps it to absorb water in return for the sucrose.

The flow of nutrients is thus from a food producing plant through a fungus to the parasitic Indian Pipe.

The Indian pipe is a member of the order Ericales, which includes about 2700 different species.  The most notable are the azalea, the cranberry and the blueberry.