Showing posts with label Indian Pipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indian Pipe. Show all posts

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Plant Oddities

Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) watercolor with colored pencil, 17" x 11.5".

I've been preparing works for BASNCR's exhibition at Strathmore Hall in June. The show is titled "Off the Beaten Path" and the idea is to present botanical art that is not quite in the traditional mold. "Out of the box," so to speak.

The Monotropa family of plants are certainly off the beaten path--most grow in old forests rich in mycorrhyzal fungi and are usually no taller than 6 - 8 inches--they would be easy to miss unless one is looking for them. I'm fascinated by these saprophytic plants (meaning lacking in chlorophyll) with scales that are modified leaves and tiny pendulous flowers that unfurl to become upright after they have been fertilized. I hope to eventually find and illustrate other members of this family.

Last summer came across another relative, Yellow Pinsesap (Monotropa hypopitys), growing at Pandapas Pond in southwestern Virginia, and have been working on an illustration of it. The first stage of my artwork in colored pencil is shown below.

Yellow Pinesap (Monotropa hypopytis), colored pencil, 12" x 10".

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Indian Pipe

The unusual flower you see here is called Indian Pipe, Monotropa uniflora is its botanical name. The plant is saprophytic, which means it feeds on decaying matter; in this case, the plant's roots feed on fungi growing on the roots of other trees, and there are ten genera and twelve species in this family of plants found in North America. The leaves are actually the scales you see on the stem and both the stem and flower are translucent ghostly white.

Several years ago Herb and I hiked at a local preserve, the Rachel Carson Forest, and found these growing there in amazing profusion. I didn't have a digital camera then, and the photos I took weren't usable. I picked one specimen hoping to get a better photo at home, and was disappointed to find that the plant turns black shortly after picking, or as it dies after setting seed.

I've been searching for this plant ever since. Last year I went there at about the same time of the year and there were none (we had a very dry year). This year, with the rains we've been having, I thought there might be some, so Herb and I went out to look for them today.

We walked all over, but found only a few specimens: a clump just emerging from the leafy ground, one single flower well past its prime, and this one. Here the nodding, bell-like flower is more erect and the outer petals are beginning to turn black, showing it has been fertilized and is beginning to fruit. If the rains keep up we'll go back in the next few weeks hoping to see masses as we did a few years back.

As an extra bonus, as we were walking back to our car, we saw a gorgeous Scarlet Tanager: his red plumage stood out like a flag among the green leaves. Herb said he'd noticed a red bird flying by as we were driving in, but in the forest we had ample time to identify and admire this beautiful bird I'd never seen before.