_Monotropa Hypopitis_
_Flowers_--Tawny, yellow, ecru, brownish pink, reddish, or bright
crimson, fragrant, about 1/2 in. long; oblong bell-shaped; borne in a
one-sided, terminal, slightly drooping raceme, becoming erect after
maturity. _Scapes:_ Clustered from a dense mass of fleshy, fibrous
roots; 4 to 12 in. tall, scaly bracted, the bractlets resembling the
sepals. _Leaves:_ None.
_Preferred Habitat_--Dry woods, especially under fir, beech, and
oak trees.
_Flowering Season_--June-October.
_Distribution_--Florida and Arizona, far northward into British
Possessions. Europe and Asia.
Branded a sinner, through its loss of leaves and honest green coloring
matter (chlorophyll), the Pine Sap stands among the disreputable gang of
thieves that includes its next of kin the Indian Pipe, the broom-rape,
dodder, coral-root, and beech-drops. Degenerates like these, although
members of highly respectable, industrious, virtuous families, would
appear to be as low in the vegetable kingdom as any fungus, were it not
for the flowers they still bear. Petty larceny, no greater than the
foxglove’s at first, then greater and greater thefts, finally lead to
ruin, until the pine-sap parasite either sucks its food from the roots
of the trees under which it takes up its abode, or absorbs, like a
ghoulish saprophyte, the products of vegetable decay. A plant that does
not manufacture its own dinner has no need of chlorophyll and leaves,
for assimilation of crude food can take place only in those cells which
contain the vital green. This substance, universally found in plants
that grub in the soil and literally sweat for their daily bread, acts
also as a moderator of respiration by its absorptive influence on light,
and hence allows the elimination of carbon dioxide to go on in the cells
which contain it. Fungi and these degenerates which lack chlorophyll
usually grow in dark, shady woods.