With its leafless stems, bowed heads, and often sallow pigmentation, the pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys syn. Hypopitys monotropa) is a curious, transcontinental woodland feature with a unique ecology and morphology. Emerging from the ground as a loosely folded fiddlehead, a pinesap is nothing more than the scape, or, floral stem of an otherwise entirely subterranean plant. The stalk bears up to thirty individual blossoms as it unfurls. The flowers attach individually along this central, unbranched stem, or, raceme, and typically all face the same direction. Each urn-shaped flower consists of four or five petals that flare outward at the tips with slightly toothed edges. The petals frame the large, disc-like stigma1A stigma is the organ at the tip of a flower’s female reproductive structure that receives pollen. It is typically connected to the ovary by a style. These three parts together comprise the pistil.; the anthers2An anther is a floral organ that produces pollen that contains a plant’s male reproductive cells. Together with the filament that attaches it to the flower, it comprises a stamen. are typically not visible or are barely visible beneath the stigma and surrounding hairs. The pinesap exhibits significant seasonal color variation, ranging from pallid yellow in plants that bloom in late spring to waxy vermilion in those that sprout in autumn (although it is typically the stems that vary in color, rather than the actual blooms). It is pollinated by bumblebees, although botanists suspect that the early season, pale blooms are also self-pollinating. (As with the distantly related gnome plant, Hemitomes congestum, the dense hairs at the opening of each flower may function to favor long-tongued creatures by preventing access to smaller insects that would feed on the nectar that attracts the pinesap’s primary pollinators.) As the stem straightens, the flowers eventually point upward as they mature and transform into globose seed capsules topped by the hardened remnants of their stigmas. In this erect form, the stem and seed capsules dry and persist into the coming year, providing a clue as to the whereabouts of this elusive perennial.
The pinesap is a mycoheterotroph, or, a plant that parasitizes fungi in the soil and does not produce energy of its own from sunlight. The fungi, in turn, have symbiotic relationships with forest flora and serve as conduits of nutrients between trees, the surrounding soil, and other plants. In this case, the pinesap contributes nothing in return and, as its common name suggests, actually taps the trees themselves for sustenance through the fungal third party. However, neither the trees nor fungi are harmed through this apparent thievery, which is actually believed to benefit the woodland ecosystem by triggering transfer of nutrients where they are most lacking.
Having no need of chlorophyll to convert sunlight into sugar, the pinesap has dispensed with it entirely, along with functional leaves, which have been reduced to mere translucent scales along its stems. This has also resulted in the plant’s unusual color — or lack thereof. The entire above-ground plant is actually no more than the pinesap’s reproductive structure that grows directly from the roots. These appear both singly and in large clumps.
The pinesap resembles its cousin, the ghost pipe (M. uniflora), but is typically yellow, orange, or red rather than pearlescent white and bears multiple flowers per stem. (It is thus sometimes commonly called the “many-flowered pipe”.) Even in winter, its dried stalks can be distinguished from those of the ghost pipe by bearing more than a single seed capsule. The 
pinesaps’ winter stalks can also be discerned from those of other distant relatives that share its range and habitat by the upright orientation of its seed capsules on relatively long pedicels (the stems that join a flower or fruit to the main stem); for example, the woodland pinedrops (Pterospora andromedea) bears downward-facing seed capsules and the candystick (Allotropa virgata) bears outward-facing seed capsules on relatively short pedicels.
The pinesap is irregularly distributed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia in conifer and mixed forests. In the Pacific Northwest, look for it in the deep shade of moist conifer woodlands on bare soil where little else grows.
The pinesap has two recognized botanical names that are the reverse of each other. It is currently in the genus Monotropa (“once turned”, in reference to the shepherd’s-crook stems of the pinesap, ghost pipe, and their kin), although recent analysis suggests that the pinesap is more distantly related to the others and should be in its own genus, Hypopitys (or, “under pines”). However, the name change is not yet official and thus each name is an accepted synonym of the other.
Typical Western Washington pinesap habitat:
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