Pinesap (False Beech Drops)
Family:
Ericaceae (heaths)
Description:
A small, fleshy perennial plant lacking chlorophyll. Stem and flower color ranges from yellow to pink, red, orange or brown or some combination of these. Summer-blooming plants tend to be yellowish, and those blooming in fall tend to be more pinkish or reddish. Rarely, they exhibit odd color patterns, such as red or white spirals like a candy cane, or red stems with yellow flowers. Flowers usually several, in a nodding raceme at the top of the stem. Blooms June-October. Leaves alternate, up to ½ inch long, stalkless, often hairy or fuzzy, clasping the stem. Fruit a dry capsule up to ¼ inch long. During fruiting, the previously nodding stem straightens, becoming erect.
Size:
Height: up to 10 inches.
Habitat and conservation:
Found in bottomland forests, moist to dry upland forests, ledges of bluffs and occasionally banks of streams and rivers. This plant lacks chlorophyll and cannot generate its own "food." Instead, its roots connect with fungi in the soil: The pinesap parasitically absorbs nutrients from a host fungus. The fungus, in turn, acquires its nutrients either through its digestion of decaying organic matter or through a mutually beneficial association with tree roots.
Distribution in Missouri:
Scattered, occurring in parts of the Ozarks and in a few north-central counties.
Status:
The species epithet is sometimes spelled "hypopithys" based on an unintentional misspelling in Carolus Linneaus's original description of the plant. Botanists are working to unravel the patterns of variation in this unusual plant, and future studies may show that two or more hard-to-distinguish species have been masquerading under the name "M. hypopitys." Pinesap is in the same family as blueberries, cranberries, heaths, azaleas and rhododendrons.
Human connections:
Plants in this genus have been used as an eye tonic, sedative, analgesic and general tonic, among other medicinal uses.
Ecosystem connections:
When we talk of "food webs," we usually think only of plants that generate sugars via photosynthesis, the herbivores that eat them and the increasingly larger carnivores that eat them. But parasitic plants, and fungi that form partnerships with tree roots, also part of the food web!