Feeling Protected and discovering Ghost Flower
I did some plein air painting while camping in the Pacific Northwest last summer.
It can be pretty idyllic painting out in nature. It can also be a little challenging. Not shown are the beads of sweat dripping down my back, mosquitos I was swatting off, ants crawling onto my blanket, and the cramp in my leg from sitting awkwardly on the ground so I could observe the plant. There was also shifting light and bits of dirt that land in the paint. That’s all ok, it was definitely worth it!
I painted “Ghost Flower“ while camping in an old growth area of Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest. A ghost flower plant was growing right in our camp-spot, and it was hard to resist. I sketched, matched its color by mixing paint, took macro photos and regular photos, and listened. I got a good start on the painting before it was time to go. The piece was finished in my studio at home while dreaming of being in the forest and looking at photos for reference.
Ghost Flower, AKA Ghost Pipe, Indian Pipe, Corpse Flower or Monotropa uniflora, is quite special. It is a fleshy perennial plant native in the PNW and only grows near old coniferous trees. It has no chlorophyll, so it can’t make its own food! That’s why it’s white and not green. It blackens with age. Ghost flower must rely on an underground fungal network to connect its roots to an old growth tree for nutrition. The plant can only survive in community and with the help of others. Kind of like us! Indian pipe means “wolf’s urine” in the Straits Salish & Nlaka’pamux languages. It’s associated with wolves and said to grow where wolves urinate! Medicinally it’s been used as a poultice for wounds that would not heal. 1
“Protected” is a painting of Cat-Tail moss that I started while camping in Oregon’s Mt.Hood National Forest. My husband and I spent an afternoon lounging by a beautiful river. I brought my paints and set up right there on the the soft ground with the rushing river flowing by. This piece is about the feeling of protection you can only get in the old growth forest. Cat-Tail Moss covered the branches of the trees, dripping down in magical gold threads as it does in many parts of the forest on Mt.Hood. The soft ground is moss and the trees envelop you with their moss covered branches. On a warm summer day I felt fully protected by the old trees sharing their strength, softness and wisdom.
Cat-Tail moss AKA Isothecium myosuroides is a native plant in the Pacific Northwest rainforests. It’s a wonder to behold in the the woods. It hangs in curtains from the branches and covers rocks and logs, helping them to decompose. Mosses are non-flowering plants which have stems and leaves but no true roots. They are in the Bryophyte class of the plant kingdom (the first plants) and date back 450 million years! They do not have a vascular system, so they need to be near water. Mosses use spores to reproduce instead of seeds.2
Keep an eye out for these beauties the next time you are in the forest! See more photos and info about my forest plant paintings here. Thanks To Kimberly Dawson for the photo of me painting in the forest.
1 Pojar, Jim & MacKinnon, Andy Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Lone Pine, 1994
2 McHale, Ellen “7 Interesting Facts about Moss” Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, May 23, 2020, https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/moss
