Indian pipe, Monotropa uniflora, is the stuff legends are made from. The ghostly white forms glowing from the dark moist forest floor conjure up feelings of spirits and sprites.

Usually found in small clusters this pale woodland flower seems more closely akin to mushrooms and fungi than rhododendron and mountain laurel. Yet Indian pipe is a vascular plant and until recently was classified in the same family (Ericaceae) as rhodos and laurels.

This small, five- to eight-inch wildflower is as puzzling to botanists as it is appealing to folklorists. The absence of chlorophyl is responsible for the pale whitish color. The nodding head makes it resemble a small pipe standing on its stem.

The plant has traditionally been thought of as a saprophyte (a plant that derives its nourishment from dead or decaying organic matter) growing on the decaying roots of other plants. The absorption of nutrients is enhanced by a special type of fungus known as montropoid mycorrhizae which attach to the roots of the Indian pipe. This is a symbiotic (both organisms benefit) relationship. Carbon flows from the roots to the fungus an inorganic nutrients flow from the fungus to the plant.

Recent studies show the mycorrhizae also penetrate the roots of nearby trees, allowing the Indian pipe to absorb nutrients from these living plants. If this is the case, Indian pipe would be hemiparasitic (partially parasitic) rather than totally saprophytic.

Although Monotropa uniflora contains no chlorophyll, the cells still contain plastids. Plastids are the structures within cells which aid in photosynthesis. The presence of these plastids suggests the Indian pipe’s ancestors were capable of photosynthesis at one time.

Taxonomists appear as confused about Indian pipe as physiologists. While most agree it no longer belongs in the family Ericaceae, some place it in the wintergreen family, Pyrolaceae, while others give it a family of its own, Monotropaceae.

The genus and species names are quite descriptive. Monotropa means “once turned” and uniflora means “single-flowered.” When the nodding single flower matures and produces seed, it turns (once) upwards and the plant becomes straight.

This small, unusual plant is cosmopolitan. They range across Canada and Alaska, from California to Florida, south to Mexico and Columbia and in Japan and the Himalayas.

The pale color and clammy feel of Indian pipe and the fact that it turns black when bruised or injured led to some eerie common names such as ghost flower and corpse plant. The many medicinal uses of the plant, as an eye lotion, for fainting and nervous conditions led to common names such as eye bright, convulsionweed and fitroot.

But the name that sticks is Indian pipe. The Cherokee have a wonderful legend regarding the Indian pipe and its connection to the Smokies. This is a condensed version by past Cherokee storyteller John Rattling-Gourd of Big Cove:

“Before selfishness crept into the world - that was a long time ago - The Cherokee people were happy and peaceable. They used the same hunting grounds and fishing grounds as their neighbors. They fished in the same streams and hunted in the same stands of forest. There were no arguments about boundaries and there were no arguments about fishing rights.

All this changed when Men learned to quarrel. The first quarrel that arose was between the Cherokee and a neighboring tribe. It was a long and bitter quarrel, so bitter that the chiefs of the two tribes decided to meet in council to try and settle their trouble. And so they met, one day, and they smoked the peace pipe in solemn council, but they did not stop quarreling. A puff on the peace pipe and a bitter word was the way it went. Days passed and still the council sat and smoked and quarreled.

Now the Great Spirit was much displeased that the Indians should quarrel while smoking the pipe of peace. And the Great Spirit said, “I shall have to do something to you men that will show you that People should live together in peace, and that when Indians smoke the pipe, it must be done in peace.”

The Great Spirit looked down at the old Men sitting in all that smoke. And he saw how gray they looked and how their heads hung down in weariness because it had been many nights since they had slept. And so he turned the old Men who smoked there in the council into small silvery gray flowers, their heads bent over and their petals hoary."


If you should find one in the woods and turn it so that the head is down and the stem up, you will see that it looks like an Indian pipe, and so it is called to this day. But in the woods where they are often seen clustered together, they appear to be little gray people sitting in long council.

Now after the Great Spirit had changed the quarreling Indians into flowers and set them out in the forest, he noticed that the smoke from their pipes still hung heavy in the air above the place where the council had been. So he gathered up the smoke and draped it over the mountains as a reminder. And he left it there until such time as all Men shall learn to live in peace together.”

(Hendershot can be reached at don@smokymountainnews.com)

 

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