Indian Pipes, Wyassup

Today's chilly walk—the temperature this morning bottomed out at 45, which is distinctly non-June-like—took me to a stretch of blue-blazed trail where, specifically, I planned to visit two beaver-crafted ponds in the hope that I could find and photograph a species of dragonfly known as the Beaverpond Baskettail. These are pretty uncommon and very early fliers, so I might well have already missed them. I certainly missed them today, but the walk was hardly for naught. There were plenty of other odes working the streams, ponds, and woods, and in the course of observing, I noticed the first flushes of "ghost plants," another common name of a chlorophyll-lacking species known as the Indian Pipe. Monotropa uniflora doesn't make its own food but rather relies on a complicated parasitic relationship with fungi and conifers to obtain nutrients. Poet Emily Dickinson called the plant "unearthly booty" and suggested that it was the "preferred flower of life." Emily's therapist might have enjoyed digging into that characterization.