Leighton Photography & Imaging

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  • Because the parasitic desert broomrape doesn't use chlorophyll like most all plants to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into food, it doesn't need to be green. Instead, this oddly beautiful plant steals nutrients from neighboring plants and has a rather fond taste for asters, such as the sunflowers are common in the desert. This one was found growing in Western Texas near the Rio Grande River.
    Desert Broomrape
  • The candystick, also know as the sugarstick,  candystriped allotropa, barber's pole and even devil's wand is an infrequently-found saprophyte in the Pacific Northwest.
    Candystick
  • Pinesap, like all saprophytes, is a plant without chlorophyll. Instead of sunlight to convert to energy, it is parasitic and feeds off of other living plants such. The pinesap feeds on the roots of conifers, as these are doing, found growing under a massive fir tree.
    Pinesap
  • Pinedrops (Pterospora andromedea), also known as "coyote's arrows" to some native American tribes are parasitic plants that feed on the roots of pine trees and other conifers where they are found where the soil is rich. These pinedrops were photographed about one-third up the southern face of Washington's Mount Rainier.
    Pinedrops
  • Pinesap is believed to get its name from the fact that it "saps" the roots of pine trees and other coniferous trees upon which it feeds. These were photographed on the south face of Mount Rainier.
    Pinesap
  • A close-up look at the flowers of pinedrops. After pollination, the flowers will fruit, eventually releasing many tiny seeds with diaphanous wings that will propagate the next generation of these saprophytic pinedrops.
    Pinedrops
  • The candystick is a truly bizarre-looking plant that grows and feeds upon the roots of coniferous trees. It gets its name from the red and white stripes, making it look somewhat like a candycane.
    Candystick
  • Sometimes confused with somewhat similar saprophytic terrestrial orchids, this just-emerging stalk can reach up to three feet tall before it flowers.
    Pinedrops
  • Close-up of the desert broomrape, showing off the beautiful and unusual hairy flowers. Because it doesn't use chlorophyll like most all plants to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into food, it doesn't need to be green. Instead, this oddly beautiful parasitic plant steals nutrients from neighboring plants and has a rather fond taste for asters, such as the sunflowers are common in the desert. This one was found growing in Western Texas near the Rio Grande River.
    Desert Broomrape
  • These fascinating bird's nest fungi found along a coastal trail in Oregon's Tillamook County on a winter hike are one of the many natural curiosities found in the Pacific Northwest. While it may not look like it, these are actually a mushrooms rather than lichens. These have already fruited and cast off their spores during a rainstorm, dropping their DNA on the forest floor for the next generation to spread and prosper.
    Bird's Nest Fungi
  • This great little oddball of the mushroom world looks just like a birds nest filled with eggs, even though it is only about half an inch wide. It is often found in groups on old berry canes, rotten wood, or rich soil, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, north to Alaska. This one was found past-season (November 2015) in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in mid-November near the Greenwater River in Washington's Cascade Mountains. In this photo you can see one "egg" (or peridiole) left in the nest - these spore-ladden reproductive structures are ejected by raindrops hitting the cup.
    Bird's Nest Fungus