THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



Vol. I. November, 1901. No. 5 



THE INDIAN PIPE. 

 By Ernest Waters Vickers. 

 In one of my October strolls while filling my pockets with 

 nnts and my heart with the glories which flee so speedily away, I 

 came upon three little brothers of the spectral pipe. Not since my 

 walks in the August woods 011 pilgrimages to a certain bank of 

 ferns in an opening where the gorgeous plume of a purple- 

 fringed orchid formed the shrine, had I seen this interesting 

 (lower. 



This is the pow-wow pipe of my vocabulary — of purest, 

 waxiest white, with a feeble salmon fire in the bowl. Pow-wow 

 pipe rather as if nature had in mind the vanishing of the Red 

 man when she placed this as a memorial in her wild garden. If 

 aii}- plant seems the product of enchantment it is this. At first 

 glance it strikes the beholder as a fungus which has the gift of 

 bloom. What experiences has it passed through that it should be 

 turned gray, or what has it seen in the dark watches of the night 

 that its chlorophyll should run white in its veins? 



The witches of old Salem must have known and fondled it 

 out on the needle carpets of the hemlock and pine shadowed 

 woods, and I think it must have been in Hawthorne's enchanted 

 forests where little Pearl played by the brook. It was born and 

 bred in shadows deep where no health-giving, life-getting sun- 

 beams fell. Yet it has a strange secret or retained sort of pleasant 

 odor saved from better days, as though it had struggled to be a 

 perfect flower and not this abortive uncanny thing. Circum- 

 stances were too much for it ; but it is to be loved for what it is, a 



