The Indian Pipe wildflowers are blooming and gorgeous here on Cape Cod. Lacking chlorophyll which results in being totally white, they are a very unique wildflower. I’ve seen many of them over the years growing in our wooded yard.
“The entire plant is a translucent, “ghostly” white, sometimes pale pinkish-white and commonly has black flecks. The leaves are scale-like and flecked with black on the flower stalk. As the Latin epithet uniflora implies, the stem bears a single flower. Upon emerging from the ground, the flower is pendant (downwardly pointed).”
Have you ever seen an Indian Pipe wildflower?
A Cherokee legend says two tribes were quarreling over hunting grounds.The y met and smoked a peace pipe but continued to fight. The Great Spirit was angry because they had smoked the sacred pipe without making peace. He transformed the chiefs into white, pipe-like flowers with bowed heads and placed rings of pipe smoke as mist around the mountaintops. Now it is said that Indian Pipes grow where friends and relatives have quarreled.
Source: theblackberrymagazine.com