Botanical atlas

Pinesap

Monotropa hypopitys

Pinesap is a strange and lovely thing to come across, a plant with no green in it at all, its pale stems rising like little candles from the leaf litter with no need for sunlight. It survives entirely on sugars passed to it through a hidden web of fungi connected to the roots of nearby trees, a relationship botanists call mycoheterotrophy. Some Indigenous peoples of North America gathered it in small amounts and used it much as they used its better known relative, ghost pipe, as a folk remedy for nerve pain, fevers, and as a wash for tired or sore eyes. It rarely appears in the written herbals of European settlers, likely because it is so uncommon to find and so quick to blacken and wilt once touched, and today it survives mostly as a quiet curiosity for foragers and naturalists rather than as an active part of herbal practice.

In tradition.

Pinesap is a strange and lovely thing to come across, a plant with no green in it at all, its pale stems rising like little candles from the leaf litter with no need for sunlight. It survives entirely on sugars passed to it through a hidden web of fungi connected to the roots of nearby trees, a relationship botanists call mycoheterotrophy. Some Indigenous peoples of North America gathered it in small amounts and used it much as they used its better known relative, ghost pipe, as a folk remedy for nerve pain, fevers, and as a wash for tired or sore eyes. It rarely appears in the written herbals of European settlers, likely because it is so uncommon to find and so quick to blacken and wilt once touched, and today it survives mostly as a quiet curiosity for foragers and naturalists rather than as an active part of herbal practice.

Safety.

Pinesap has little safety data and is not established as edible; the fresh plant has occasionally been reported to cause stomach upset, so it is best left unpicked and unused.