Pinesap

I was on a mission this morning, a refreshingly chilly start to the day. My task was to document a refuge that two dear friends had given to the regional land trust and put the best pictures in some kind of album or book to help one of them, who is suffering from increasingly severe dementia, remember the pleasure that the land had brought to both of them. I shot long landscape panoramas and I also zeroed in on details, the latter my photographic equivalent of the close reading strategy beloved by English professors. Thus the tight view of an amazing plant called Pinesap. At a glance, you can tell that Monotropa hypopitys lacks chlorophyll, the molecule that powers most of the green world. This means that instead of making its own food, Pinesap, a member of the Blueberry family, gets its sustenance from fungi that have entered into what's called a mycorrhizal relationship with tree roots. I'm not sure what the mushrooms get out of consorting with parasites, but Pinesap, which is often found under pines, certainly reaps rewards.