Photographing Ghosts In The Garden

Monotropa uniflora

Photographing Ghosts in the Garden is creepy if you consider the subject in the lens is found only in dark woodlands and is known by such morbid names as:

Convulsion Root
Corpse plant
Death plant
Fairy smoke
Ghost flower

Here, on the Island, we mostly call it Indian Pipe (in reference to its pipe-like shape). And far from creepy, I find it a fascinating and cheeky little plant whose ménage à trois existence between trees, fungus and itself is more than a a little beguiling. A botanist's description of the plant as "a waxy white saprophyte of deep forest shade" is ooooh so hauntingly lovely! It evokes a film noir femme fatale as spoken by a hard boiled detective like Bogie or Mitchum as Marlowe...

"... she 'was a waxy white saprophyte of deep forest shade' that haunted the mind of every man in the room. She was a flower alright, a ghost flower, and that spelled corpse plant to the man who did her wrong. And that ain't no fairy smoke to a tough gumshoe like me."