Indian Pipe

a smooth, pale, wax-like plant, practically leafless. It is shaped much like the stem and bowl of a clay pipe with a flaring mouth. At first sight one would call a colony of them a clump of mushrooms, but close examination shows that the flower is like that of the winter-green, pyrola, and blueberry. It is a member of the heath family. The entire plant turns black in drying. As might be suspected from its lack of coloring matter, the Indian pipe grows on the roots or rotting bodies of other plants, appropriating the food prepared by them to their own use. Like the dodder it has no need, therefore, of green chlorophyll to digest plant food. See Dodder; Parasite