A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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ghost pipe
Ghost pipe is a plant with no green in it anywhere. The whole thing comes out of the leaf litter waxy white, a single nodding flower on a scaly stem four to eight inches tall, standing in dark woodland in small clusters. It has no chlorophyll and does not photosynthesize. It taps into fungi in the soil and takes sugar from them, and those fungi are themselves connected to the roots of trees, so the plant is living on the forest at one remove.
Etymology
The English name is for the color and the shape of the nodding head. It also goes by Indian pipe, corpse plant, and ghost flower. The scientific name means one-turn and single-flowered, describing the way the stem bends over and carries exactly one bloom, which straightens up as the seed sets.
Notes
Because it depends on a fungus that depends on a tree, ghost pipe cannot be transplanted or cultivated and only appears in established woodland. It turns black when picked or bruised. Emily Dickinson called it the preferred flower of life and had one painted on the cover of a book of her poems.