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?
“America’s eminent poet, Emily Dickinson, called the Indian pipe “the preferred flower of life.” In a letter to Mabel Todd, she confides, “I still cherish the clutch with which I bore it from the ground when a wondering child, and unearthly booty, and maturity only enhances the mystery, never decreases it.””
https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/beauty/mycotrophic/monotropa_uniflora.shtml