A Book of the Seasons: Pine-sap and Tobacco-pipe

I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

There is not only the tobacco-pipe,

but pine-sap. 

July 29, 1853

July 30, 2023

July 8.  Edith Emerson says she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord.  July 8, 1857

July 22.  Monotropa uniflora, Indian-pipe.  July 22, 1852

July 23. The tobacco-pipe in damp woods. July 23, 1851

July 24.  Tobacco-pipe much blackened, out a long time. July 24, 1856

July 29.  Hypopitys lanuginosa, American pine-sap, just pushing up, — false beech-drops. Gray says from June to August. It is cream-colored or yellowish under the pines in Hubbard's Wood Path. Some near the fence east of the Close. A plant related to the tobacco-pipe. Remarkable this doubleness in nature, — not only that nature should be composed of just these individuals, but that there should be so rarely or never an individual without its kindred, — its cousin. It is allied to something else. There is not only the tobacco-pipe, but pine-sap. July 29, 1853

July 30.  I have seen a few new fungi within a week. The tobacco-pipes are still pushing up white amid the dry leaves, sometimes lifting a canopy of leaves with them four or five inches. July 30, 1854

July 31.  To Flint’s Pond . . . I have smelled fungi in the thick woods for a week, though they are not very common. I see tobacco-pipes now in the path.  July 31, 1858

August 10. I see many tobacco-pipes, now perhaps in their prime, if not a little late, and hear of pine-sap. The Indian pipe, though coming with the fungi and suggesting, no doubt, a close relation to them, — a sort of connecting link between flowers and fungi, — is a very interesting flower, and will bear a close inspection when fresh. The whole plant has a sweetish, earthy odor, though Gray says it is inodorous. I see them now on the leafy floor of this oak wood, in families of twelve to thirty sisters of various heights,—from two to eight inches,— as close together as they can stand, the youngest standing close up to the others, all with faces yet modestly turned downwards under their long hoods. Here is a family of about twenty-five within a diameter of little more than two inches, lifting the dry leaves for half their height in a cylinder about them. They generally appear bursting up through the dry leaves, which, elevated around, may serve to prop them. Springing up in the shade with so little color, they look the more fragile and delicate. They have very delicate pinkish half-naked stems with a few semitransparent crystalline-white scales for leaves, and from the sinuses at the base of the petals without (when their heads are drooping) more or less dark purple is reflected, like the purple of the arteries seen on a nude body. They appear not to flower only when upright. Gray says they are upright in fruit. They soon become black-specked, even before flowering.  August 10, 1858

August 13.  Hypopytis abundantly out (how long ?), apparently a good while, in that long wood-path on the left side, under the oak wood, before you begin to rise, going from the river end. Very little indeed is yet erect, and that which is not is apparently as forward as the rest. Not generally quite so high as the Monotropa uniflora which grows with it. I see still in their midst the dry upright brown spikes of last year’s seed-vessels. August 13, 1858

August 14.  Hypopitys, just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook, about done. Apparently a fungus like plant. It erects itself in seed. August 14, 1856.

August 23.  See an abundance of pine-sap on the right of Pine-sap Path.  August 23, 1858

August 27.  Tobacco-pipe still.  August 27, 1856

August 31. The monotropa is still pushing up. August 31, 1858 

September 1. P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook and Flint's Pond . . . See, I think, my first tobacco-pipe this afternoon, now that they are about done, and have seen no pine- sap this year, abundant as both the above were last year. Like fungi, these plants are apparently scarce in a dry year, so that you might at first think them rare plants. This is a phenomenon of drought. September 1, 1859

September 9. C. brings me a small red hypopitys. It has a faint sweet, earthy, perhaps checkerberry, scent, like that sweet mildewy fragrance of the earth in spring. September 9, 1857

September 21. Came through that thick white pine wood on the east of the spruce swamp. This is a very dense white pine grove . . . Under this dense shade, the red-carpeted ground is almost bare of vegetation and is dark at noon. There grow . . .on the low west side and also the east side, an abundance of tobacco-pipe, which has begun to turn black at the tip of the petals and leaves.  September 21, 1857

September 23. I see yellow pine-sap, in the woods just east of where the beeches used to stand, just done, but the red variety is very common and quite fresh generally there. September 23, 1857

September 23. Red pine-sap by north side of Yew Path some ten rods east of yew, not long done. The root of the freshest has a decided checkerberry scent, and for a long time — a week after — in my chamber, the bruised plant has a very pleasant earthy sweetness. September 23, 1860

October 6.  Going through Ebby Hubbard's woods . . . I see a great quantity of hypopitys, now all sere, along the path in the woods beyond. Call it Pine-Sap Path. It seems to have been a favorable season for it. It was evidently withered earlier than the tobacco-pipe, which is still pretty white! October 6, 1857

October 14. On the top of Ball’s Hill, nearly half-way its length, the red pine-sap, quite fresh, apparently not long in bloom, the flower recurved. As last year, I suspect that this variety is later than the yellowish one, of which I have seen none for a long time. The last, in E. Hubbard’s wood, is all brown and withered. This is a clear and distinct deep-red from the ground upward, all but the edges and tips of the petals, and is very handsome amid the withered lower leaves, as it were the latest flower of the year. The roots have not only a sweet earthy, but decidedly checkerberry, scent. At length this fungus-like plant bursts red-ripe, stem and all, from the ground. Its deep redness reminds me of the deeper colors of the western sky after the sun has set, — a sort of afterglow in the flowery year. I suspect that it is eminently an autumnal flower.  October 14, 1858

November 25. Methinks there has been more pine-sap than usual the past summer. I never saw a quarter part so much. It stands there withered in dense brown masses, six or eight inches high, partly covered with dead leaves. The tobacco-pipes are a darker brown. November 25, 1857

July 30, 2023

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Pine-sap and Tobacco-pipe

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

Notes.  

We’ve been seeing numerous clusters of both ghost plant (Monotropa uniflora) and yellow pine-sap (Hypopitys monotropa). These plants, which are often mistaken for fungi, lack chlorophyll and don’t rely on photosynthesis. Instead, both are mycotrophs, meaning that they parasitize mycorrhizal fungi, and in this way, indirectly, pull energy from the roots of the trees. Although they’re similar looking, if you inspect their flowers closely, you’ll see that ghost plant has singular flowers, whereas pine-sap produces cascades of flowers. Pine-sap also has fuzz on its stems, and ghost plant does not. (Most of the time ghost plant is also much more pure white than pine-sap…but that isn’t a reliable distinction.) ~northernwoodlandsmagazine #ThisWeekintheWoods July 27. 2023

The red, yellow (and other “species” of pine sap) are often lumped together as Monotropa hypopitys, described generally as a saprophytic, red, pink, lavender, or yellow plant with several vase-like, nodding flowers on a downy, scaly stem; stem and flowers colored alike, with  autumn-flowering plants being red color, and early-flowering plants yellow.  Like Indian-pipe, pine-saps are mycotrophs, receiving nutrients via fungal mycelia rather than through photosynthesis. ~ GoBotany, Wildflower.org

"Pine drops" (Pterospora andromedea).See First Sighting Of 'Pine-Drops' Plant In Massachusetts In Berkshires; MassWildlife; U.S. Forest Service.