_Epifagus virginiana_
_Flowers_--Small, dull purple and white, tawny, or brownish striped;
scattered along loose, tiny bracted, ascending branches. _Stem:_
Brownish or reddish tinged, slender, tough, branching above, 6 in. to 2
ft. tall, from brittle, fibrous roots.
_Preferred Habitat_--Under beech, oak, and chestnut trees.
_Flowering Season_--August-October.
_Distribution_--New Brunswick, westward to Ontario and Missouri, south
to the Gulf states.
Nearly related to the broom-rape is this less attractive pirate, a
taller, brownish-purple plant, with a disagreeable odor, whose erect,
branching stem without leaves is still furnished with brownish scales,
the remains of what were once green leaves in virtuous ancestors, no
doubt. But perhaps even these relics of honesty may one day disappear.
Nature brands every sinner somehow; and the loss of green from a plant’s
leaves may be taken as a certain indication that theft of another’s food
stamps it with this outward and visible sign of guilt. The grains of
green to which foliage owes its color are among the most essential of
products to honest vegetables that have to grub in the soil for a
living, since it is only in such cells as contain it that assimilation
of food can take place. As chlorophyll, or leaf-green, acts only under
the influence of light and air, most plants expose all the leaf surface
possible; but a parasite, which absorbs from others juices already
assimilated, certainly has no use for chlorophyll, nor for leaves
either; and in the broom-rape, beech-drops, and Indian Pipe, among other
thieves, we see leaves degenerated into bracts more or less without
color, according to the extent of their crime. Now they cannot
manufacture carbo-hydrates, even if they would, any more than fungi can.
The beech-drop bears cleistogamous or blind flowers in addition to the
few showy ones needed to attract insects.