Waxy white, as translucent as a ghost and covered in scales: this paranormal parasite
looks as ghastly as it acts as it saps the nutrients from unsuspecting mushrooms.
It doesn’t need the light, so it’s often found in the
deep dark woods with the other fairytale monsters.
This is the ghost plant.
Hey I’m Tasha the Amazon and you’re watching Floralogic. Today we’re talking about a spooky
spectre of a plant that lives in the deepest, darkest, moistest forests of the Americas and
Asia: Monotropa uniflora, otherwise known as ghost pipe, Indian pipe or the ghost plant.
oooh!
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The ghost plant’s scientific name Monotropa uniflora is a real mishmash of classical
languages: Monotropa from the Greek for “one turn”, uniflora from the Latin for “one flowered”.
One turn one flowered” basically describes the
fact that each stem only has a single, odorless flower.
But what the scientific name blatantly ignores is that everything about this plant is spooky to the
armpits. How do you say “creepy as hell” in Latin? Let’s start with its looks: This plant is
a ghostly translucent white, or sometimes pink, that develops black spots as it ages.
It’s a perennial, ranging in height from 10 to 30 centimeters, and commonly grows in clusters.
Dare to venture where it lives and pick a bunch,
it will turn from shimmering white to goth black before your very eyes. Ooh!
Because it’s so delicate and looks like frozen jelly, the ghost plant is sometimes also called
the ice plant because it seemingly melts away when picked and handled.
So if you’re hoping for a beautiful snowy white bouquet of ghost plants
to haunt your credenza, I’m sorry to disappoint.
The ghost plant’s stem is covered in scaly modified leaves called bracts.
If you think you’ve never heard of a bract before, you may know them better than you realize.
You might even decorate your house with bracts every December!
The “flower” of a poinsettia is actually a bunch of bracts that are more fabulous than
the true flowers themselves! The flower of the ghost plant
nods downward until it is pollinated by an insect, at which point, it points upright.
Bumblebees are the typical pollinators and they
get a sweet nectar and some yummy pollen as a reward for their visit.
After it blooms, it goes dark and the flower is replaced with a seed capsule full of tiny,
wind-dispersed seeds. The root system of the ghost plant is brittle and fleshy.
The roots are apparently also very tasty to grizzly bears which have been observed
digging them up for a nice snack. The Ghost plant is in the Ericaceae
family, otherwise known as heaths or heathers, depending on your preference.
Famous members of this family of over 4000 include blueberries and cranberries.
While it may be related to your favourite yogurt toppings,
the pale colour, downturned flower, and firm, fleshy texture of the ghost
plant often lead people to falsely assume that this plant is a mushroom.
While not a fungus itself, fungi do play a key role in how ghost plants
get their nutrients. So the connection with fungus is actually not that far-flungus.
Colin: Ayo!
Tasha: Which brings us to the creepy as hell way it gets its nutrients.
The Ghost plant is one of 3000 heterotrophic plants,
which need to rustle up their nutrients from outside sources."
And heterotrophs do just that, but in very uncanny ways.
Insectivorous plants, like venus fly traps, butterwort, sundew and pitcher plants,
which we’ve talked about on the channel, catch and digest bugs for nutrients.
Parasitic plants, like dodder, sap their nutrients from a host plant.
Like dodder, the Ghost plant is a parasite,
but they lack the chlorophyll necessary to make their own food from sunlight.
The Ghost Plant was once thought to be a saprophyte - a plant or fungi that eats
dead or decaying matter, but new research has found that instead of feasting on the dead,
ghost plants take a very vampiric approach, sucking the nutrients from unsuspecting fungi.
These are mycorrhizal fungi that live around the bases of trees in the deep,
dark woods where ghost plants are found.
In fact, almost all terrestrial plants have root-infecting mycorrhizal fungi.
They live in what is called mutualistic symbiosis.
The plant gives the fungi nutrients through its roots and in turn the fungi enable
the plant to increase its nutrient and water absorption capabilities.
The relationship between fungi and ghost plants,
however, is anything but mutual. The ghost plant catfishes the fungi,
tricking it into thinking it’s entering another legit symbiosis.
But this relationship is a toxic one, since the ghost plant doesn’t give anything back.
It just siphons off the fungi’s hard-won nutrients and energy like the parasite it is.
If only ghost plants were as nice to fungi as they are to bumblebees!
So the tree does the photosynthesizing,
the fungi absorbs the nutrients from the tree’s roots,
and the ghost plant steals them from the fungi.
And they do it all without lifting a single bract!
Ghost plants are so delicate that propagating them at home is next to impossible.
They rely entirely on a specific climate, dark and moist conditions and, of course,
the tenuous love triangle between the tree and its fungus!
No matter how many times you criticize it for wearing white after labour day, you’ll
never be able to throw enough shade at this spooky parasite to make it thrive outside of the forest.
So what should we talk about next? Let me know in the comments and be
sure to subscribe for new episodes every week! Bye!
spooky bye! did I disappear? am I gone?
but what this plant no hehehe
Oooh!
oh It's a Spooky
Oh! It's a spooky on my shirt! oh!
Okay.
oh damn okay okay so sorry sorry okay how do you say creepy as hell in Latin
je ne sais pas, oh man
Colin: French
Tasha: the roots are apparently also very tasty to grizzly bears who've
been observed digging them up observed they've been observed I observed them
if only ghost plants were as nice to fungi as they were to bumblebees
do it again with that assault oh
no plans we're harmed in the filming of this show about plants except for the footage that
we're showing you probably in another clip where plants are very clearly being harmed