AN INTERESTING PLANT FAMILY

Among the many species of plants that have been labeled and displayed to aid the Park visitor at Longmire none have excited more comment than a small group of colorless, saprophytic plants. These are all true flowering plants and are members of the Pyrola family. They are all inhabitants of the deep, shady woods and have adapted themselves to get along without the sunshine so necessary to many other flowers for they live entirely upon the decayed matter of the forest floor and having lost all green coloring matter and, having no further use for leaves, they are possessed only of leaf scales which serve the purpose.

The most showy of these is the Barber's Pole (Allotropa virgata). This is a beautifully red and white striped plant with a single stem, one to three feet tall and with a terminal raceme of flowers as add as the stem. It has no corolla but its sepals are nearly white and united at the base while the anthers project beyond the sepals and are a dark, chocolate brown -- as is also the large ovary and smaller stigma. This queer combination of colors - red, white and brown -- attracts, as you may well imagine a great deal of attention both in the flower display and along the trails. Pine Drops or Pine Sap (Pterospora andromeda) is another plant much like the Barber's Pole in manner of growth but much more common, usually occurring in small colonies. This plant has a red sticky stem and a large terminal raceme of nodding flowers. The stems die in the fall and may be found in this condition at all seasons of the year.

The many flowered Indian Pipe (Hypopitys hypopitys) is now just pushing its way up through the forest floor. It comes through the ground very red in color and with its several flowers all rolled up. It is then that the flowers have a nodding character but later, when the stem becomes greatly elongated, these colorless flowers assume an upright position. This, like the Pine Drop, occurs in small colonies. At a lower level than Longmire, on Tahoma Creek near the Park Entrance, is found the Single Flowered Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora), also called the Ghost Plant because of its pearly white color. It is very numerous at this elevation but 500 feet higher it is not found at all. But most rare of these strange plants is the Cone Plant (Hemitomes congestum) which is not often found by the tourist. For three years the writer has tried to preserve a small group of these interesting plants in the center of the Auto Camp. It grows in dense clusters and only pushes its way a few inches above the ground. The dense cone -- like groupe of flowers is a beautiful rose pink in color when in their prime but with age they turn black -- as do nearly all members of this group. . . Charles Landes, Ranger-Naturalist.