Complimentary Blueberry Juice

Recently I was lucky enough to see some Ghost Plants aka Ghost Pipe on a hike. These creatures are fascinating enough but when I got back to farming, I noticed some in my own back yard.

One of the things I hear most when talking about farming is the topic of
“nutrients.” The Ghost Pipe is something that really forces us to think about what “nutrients” are and where they come from.

For the Ghost Pipe is not a mushroom. Nor is it a flowering plant that photosynthesizes…hence their white colour. Ghost Pipes are parasites linking up with a mycorrhizal network connected to trees.

To understand how the Ghost Pipe is getting energy without photosynthesis, we need to understand that the fungus the Ghost Pipe is plugging into is in a symbiotic relationship with trees. The trees photosynthesize, creating sugars from the Carbon in Carbon Dioxide. The trees release that through their root systems to many symbionts, one of them being mycorrhizae. The mycorrhizae help the tree obtain the many things or “nutrients” its root system could never possibly reach.

When we use the term “nutrients” we are often imagining something inert or singular elements such as Nitrogen.

In pondering the Ghost Pipe, it becomes apparent that things are not so simple. That there are many metabolic processes going on, with many organisms involved, creating many complex molecules, which move throughout an ecological system in many directions. Plants are high-level communicators. These molecules and movements happen at the atomic and cellular level…all invisible to us.

Stay curious!

Graham

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