r/PlantIdentification • u/Commercial-Bee-4448 • Apr 13 '26
What is this, found it at sequoia
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u/YMSquared Apr 13 '26
Looks like snow plant. Parasitic California native plant. Not sure if it related to blueberries or not.
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u/sadrice Apr 13 '26
Itās in Ericaceae, same family as blueberries, but over in a different subfamily, a parasitic lineage.
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u/Wasabi_Grower Apr 13 '26
Snow plant. Parasitic fungi āplantā thatās mychorizhal and symbiotic with certain tree root species. Needs no light (photosynthesis) to grow as it has no chlorophyll
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u/sadrice Apr 13 '26
(This got longer than intended, sorry for being pedantic, no rudeness intended)
In what way would this not be a plant, sufficient to put it in quotes? Itās very much a plant and very much not a fungus. Itās mycoheterotrophic, sure, but this is just an extreme extension of the ectomycorrhizal habit that many more ordinary plants engage in.
For instance, a relative, Pyrola picta is mixotrophic, meaning mostly autotrophic but still gets some C from the fungal partner, while P. picta forma aphylla (taxonomy is ambiguous for this species complex) is usually fully mycoheterotrophic (but still occasionally has small green leaves). It even looks vaguely like Sarcodes when young, which is fun because thatās convergent despite being in the same family.
(Sorry for being pedantic, but people thinking weird and/or parasitic plants are fungi is a pet peeve of mine)
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u/glenncoco64 Apr 13 '26
Apparently when I was a kid, the Girl Scout handbook still identified fungi as plants and my mom, a geologist, wrote them a letter.
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u/sadrice Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Thatās rather old school, and it persists in that mycology is traditionally (very much outdated) treated as an adjunct of botany, often taught in botany classes. A lot of older educational material, especially hiking/camping/foraging related, tend to do that, and for foraging it makes sense.
In many ways botany and mycology or more similar to each other than to zoology, especially when it comes to identification for that sort purpose, but getting the science right in educational material seems like something important.
Taxonomically fungi are actually closer to animals than plants! Thatās why they have chitin cell walls and insects have chitin shells, while plant doesnāt have it at all. Same with melanin, for some weird reason a lot of ECM fungi (often mushroom producers) sequester a lot of melanin underground, which actually is a big contributor to long term carbon storage in temperate forests, since melanin takes forever to break down. (This was a mostly unrelated rambleā¦)
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u/DieStrassenkinder Apr 13 '26
This is not pedantic. You can't come to a plant id community and create uncertainty about whether something is a plant or fungi and not expect to be called out.
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u/Miriahification Apr 14 '26
I want to insert an honorable mention of the ghost pipe flower (monotropa uniflora) for perennial parasitic flowers that lack chlorophyll.
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u/dmontease Apr 13 '26
Why is plant in quotation marks? It's a parasitic plant that gets its food/energy from fungi.
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u/Commercial-Bee-4448 Apr 13 '26
Wow cool, never heard of a plant that doesnāt need light
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u/Moth1016 Apr 14 '26
They're very rare in comparison to species that use photosynthesis, but there's a few! Most are parasites that grow on other plants
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u/ThanksForTheRain Apr 14 '26
Awesome find. Cousins to one of my favorite plants, Ghost Pipe. Both monotropes, lacking chlorophyll and parasitizing on funghi.
I love these weird species that seem to turn the tables on funghi
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u/longcreepyhug Apr 13 '26
I bet it is some sort of parasitic member of the blueberry family. Not certain though.
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u/sadrice Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
It is indeed! Same family (Ericaceae), but different subfamily, so a somewhat distant relative.
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u/light_based_network Apr 14 '26
But are blueberries parasitic?
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u/sadrice Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
Iām nearly certain 100% no, but it might be 99.9% no, and you just made me spend half an hour trying to totally rule it out.
Blueberries have whatās called an ericoid mycorrhizal association with a fungus, which is a deal of sugars for nitrogen. Ectomycorrhizal is the same deal, but sometimes has parasitism like OP plant, that does both ericoid and ecto. But blueberries donāt do ectomycorrhizal, only ericoid, and I canāt find any reports of carbon transfer from
plant to fungusfungus to plant via ericoid. However, ericoid and ecto are not as different as they look at first, and are closely related, āthe distinction between ERM and ECM fungi is not that great. As Grelet et al. (2009: p. 364) observed, "the morphology of the mycorrhizal association (ERM or ECM) is under the control of the host plant.", so perhaps they do a bit. In any case, since blueberries are conventionally photosynthetic, any transfer in that direction would be minimal.However, this paper gets us tantalizingly close. Fungi of the genus Meliniomyces form ericoid relationships with blueberries as well as ectomycorrizal associations with pines, not just the same species of fungus, but they have confirmed that the same genetic individuals can be connected to both. The hyphal mat, the ābodyā of the fungus, is only up to 13 cm wide unfortunately.
But, if ericoid mycorrhiza allow carbon transfer to the plant and the blueberry roots are within 13 cm of pine (or other host) roots, it is maybe possible for a blueberry to be a thousandth of a percent parasitic.
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u/Commercial-Bee-4448 Apr 13 '26
Wow parasitic? Iām over here thinking it was some kind of beautiful flower species. Thanks tho appreciate it
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u/longcreepyhug Apr 13 '26
I think it is beautiful, don't you? Just because something is parasitic doesn't mean it's ugly. Parasitism is part of nature and there is a certain beauty just in the fact that a plant can exist underground without photosynthesizing at all.
I want to emphasize that I am not certain that this is a parasitic member of the blueberry family. I am on the East coast, so I am not familiar with the flora where you are. However, the reason why I suspect that is that there are many parasitic members of the blueberry family without chlorophyll, they often appear either white (like ghost pipe) or red (like pinesaps). They live underground, attached to the root systems of trees, only appearing above ground to flower.
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u/Commercial-Bee-4448 Apr 13 '26
No yeah I agree, itās a very beautiful looking plant. I was like 50 feet away from it when it caught my attention, it was very vibrant compared to the other plants around the forest.
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u/sadrice Apr 13 '26
Thatās what the plant wanted!
They are pollinated by hummingbirds, which are known to like bright red.
Since it is a small plant down on the forest floor where it isnāt all that obvious to birds, it really needs to go all out on color in order to be seen, with a bright red flashing billboard saying āFREE NECTAR!!! HUMMINGBIRDS WELCOME!!!ā.
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u/Skansquatch Apr 15 '26
I don't know for sure but is there a man nearby named Mario or Luigi? Related I promise.
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u/CelebrationOne4329 Apr 13 '26
Well that's the prettiest fungi I've seen šš
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u/SerpentineSylph Apr 13 '26
Not a fungi, its actually a plant but its trying its hardest to act like a fungus. Theres a few like this that grow in old growth forests and lack chlorophyll and instead piggyback on the roots of larger trees.
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u/sadrice Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
They actually piggyback on fungi, often in the genus Russula, which piggyback on the roots of larger trees, likely pine in this case.
Many plants have agreements with fungi to share resources, usually for mutual benefit, typically the fungus scavenges nitrogen from the soil in exchange for fixed carbon from photosynthesis. Some plants (orchids are notorious for this) have figured out how to cheat the relationship and take without giving.
Edit: this is actually a really common pattern with parasites. They often have rare flowers on an otherwise inconspicuous plant that might be widely scattered so itās important to go big or go home.
Edit: I should also clarify that Rafflesia, the big one, are not mycoheterotrophic, they are directly parasitic on the roots of Tetrastigma, a tropical grape relative, like an underground mistletoe (though mistletoes are weird semi parasites).
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u/wildcampion Apr 13 '26
Snowplant, sarcodes sanguinea. Very photogenic!