Zena McKeown: Ghost Flowers (2023) [1]
Instagram: @zeddybear
What do you get if you cross a floraphile with a hauntologist? The answer, of course, is someone who loves ghost flowers ...
As the name Monotropa uniflora implies, the ghost plant - a flowering herbaceous perennial native to temperate regions of Asia and the Americas - is one of a kind and uniquely beautiful. If usually the flowers have a waxy white colouration, some specimens are marked with black flecks or seem to glow with an eerie pinkish hue.
Unlike green plants rich in chlorophyll and which synthesise nutrients via photosynthesis, ghost plants are mycoheterotrophic, meaning that they parasitically feed off underground fungi (which live in turn on the root systems of trees). Since they are not directly dependent on sunlight, therefore, it means that ghost plants can grow in very dark environments, such as the undergrowth of dense forests.
All this adds to their spooky reputation - as does the fact that the plant contains glycosides which can be toxic to humans (though not the bumblebees and other insects that disperse their pollen). Having said that, if cooked correctly, ghost plants are perfectly safe to eat and are said to have a flavour similar to asparagus.
The renowned American poet Emily Dickinson loved ghost plants and they feature in several of her verses. She drafted this poem in her own fair hand on a fragment of paper in 1879:
'Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe -
'Tis dimmer than a Lace -
No stature has it, like a Fog
When you approach the place -
Not any voice imply it here -
Or intimate it there -
A spirit - how doth it accost -
What function hath the Air?
This limitless Hyperbole
Each one of us shall be -
'Tis Drama - if Hypothesis
It be not Tragedy - [2]
Notes
[1] This is an early sketch (pastel on paper) by Miss McKeown (used with kind permission of the artist). The finished work can be viewed on her Instagram account: @zeddybear
[2] Emily Dickinson, 'Tis whiter than an Indian Pipe, poem, 1879, Amherst College Archives & Special Collections. Click here to see the handwritten original at the Morgan Library & Museum (New York).
