Saturday, August 20, 2005

Weekend Bloom Blogging

Since my own flowers are starting to show the wear and tear of late summer, I decided to take a stroll around our property and see if God has anything interesting growing around here right now.

And God does. Behold the Indian pipe, Monotropa uniflora. (And, yes, I had to look that up.) It is a member of the heath family, like a blueberry, but it is a saprophyte -- having no chlorophyll to manufacture its own food, it gets all its nourishment from decaying matter on the forest floor. I found this group of flowers under a maple tree near the swale behind our garage. The photo really doesn't do them justice -- up close, they look as if they have been sculpted from wax, touched here and there with the merest hint of mauve.

"Stop and consider the wondrous works of God."

Monotropa uniflora Posted by Picasa

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let me do my best Californian . . .

"Wowwwwwww!" ;-p

Seriously, those are amazing (and kudos to you, LC, as photog)

LutheranChik said...

A funny story about my supposed photographic prowess...I have an old (relatively), first-release Mavica camera with a floppy disk drive. It took great point-and-shoot pictures with no effort on my part. One day, about a year or so ago, I dropped it -- on a carpeted floor that turned out to be cement underneath -- and ruined the viewfinder; now all you can see are light and dark. I kept using the camera, though, because I liked it -- even used it at work;-) -- I'd look through the Rorshach-like splats on the viewfinder, cross my fingers and click the shutter. And the photos were exactly the same quality as they were when I wasn't aiming blind. LOL So it's not me; it's the camera.;-)

LutheranChik said...

But thank you! And to think it's the only cluster of them around! I was really fortunate to find them at their peak.

Andy Kaylor said...

I saw a lot of these on a camping trip I took last month, and I had no idea what they were. They are remarkable little plants, aren't they?