Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora)

The enigmatic poet Emily Dickinson described the Indian Pipe as the “preferred flower of life,” but it’s commonly known as the corpse or ghost plant. I’m not good at conundrums and wonder what she meant. Reputed to be Dickinson’s favorite flower, I’ve seen references to at least three of her poems that mention the Indian Pipe. Native Americans used Indian Pipe, later called eyebright, to treat eye inflammation. Colonists knew the flower as convulsion root, because they used it to treat convulsions. Nowadays, medicinal plant experts warn that it may be toxic. The plant exists widely, except for in the southwest, the intermountain west, and the central Rockies. I was lucky enough to see it while hiking in a dense, “humusy” Maine forest. The Indian Pipe is a saprophyte, an organism that feeds on dead or decaying matter. More accurately, the plants are parasites that feed on fungi that in turn feed on trees. These wildflowers don’t need leaves to produce chlorophyll, so the plants do not have any green, and the leaves are merely scales or bracts. The plants turn black with age or when damaged—these were new and pristine, white with a pinkish tinge, waxy, with drooping heads.