Pipsissewa: a Little Forest Gem
Photo by Nancy Gibson.
If you are an outdoors sort of person living on a small island like SḴŦAḴ | Mayne Island, you will probably have come up with some strategies to make our lovely but very limited number of walking trails more interesting. One idea is to walk the same trail at different times of the year, and at different times of the day, and take note of how things change with the movement of light and shift in season. Another strategy is to walk looking up (don’t trip, though) and see what is in the canopy or in the sky overhead. Or look down, and see what an interesting variety of things are on the ground. I sometimes mix things up a bit by walking in the opposite direction on a loop trail, and it’s amazing how different things look when you do that. Late last June, I was walking counter clockwise on a loop I have walked many times, and I came across a small grove of little pink flowers that were completely new to me. Returning home, after some sleuthing on the web, I learned they are called pipsissewa or Prince’s-Pine (Chimaphila umbellata), and according to local naturalist Michael Dunn, this may be the only area where they are known to grow on SḴŦAḴ | Mayne Island. This perennial flowering plant grows in small patches throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere in well-drained mixed or coniferous woodlands, usually in light shade, and also in sandy soils.
Pipsissewa is a small, evergreen sub-shrub growing four to ten inches tall and has glossy toothed leaves arranged around a short central stalk. In early summer, waxy pink flowers rise up on slender stems in nodding clusters of three to seven, standing well above the upper leaves, and their lovely fragrance attracts pollinators. Flowers measure about half an inch across and have five rounded petals. These petals are arranged around a plump green central pistil which is surrounded by a ring of red anthers. This little shrub spreads along the forest floor by sending out underground rhizomes that sprout new stalks. A patch of pipsissewa is usually just one individual organism, and it can extend outwards to the size of a large living room. This is a very long-lived plant – scientists believe some rhizomes have lived as long as a human, 90 years or more.
The thing that I found most interesting about pipsissewa is that it is something called a “mixotrophic” plant. This means that it uses chlorophyll in its leaves to fix carbon from the atmosphere, but it also gains nutrients through a mycorrhizal association with fungi in the soil. This communication of many trees and shrubs through links with fungi in the soil enables the transfer of various nutrients between species. Fungi in the soil develop special structures that surround or penetrate root hairs of plants allowing carbon, nitrogen, water and other nutrients to be shared between them. In the case of pipsissewa, researchers have identified a dozen different fungal species that connect with its root hairs, some of which also connect with trees and other shrubs.
Fertilised pipsissewa flowers mature into five-sectioned fruit capsules in early autumn, which start out green in colour and then mature to a deep pink. In late fall, each capsule darkens to brown and splits open to disburse as many as 8,000 seeds! These seeds are extremely light and can therefore be distributed easily by a light wind, but their small size means they carry only a small amount of the nutrients necessary to help them germinate and grow. Here again, their mixotropic capacities play an essential role. A seed falling on the ground will seek contact with an appropriate strand of fungal mycorrhiza in order to germinate.
Pipsissewa traditionally played an important medicinal role among North American Indigenous Peoples and settlers. In fact, the unusual name is an adaptation of a Cree word meaning “breaks into little pieces” because the leaves contain a substance that was thought to dissolve kidney stones. It was used to treat a variety of other aliments as well including fevers, colds, skin diseases, stomach complaints, chest pains, and rheumatism. However, as this little plant is slow-growing and not very common, it is considered an “at-risk” species. It is extremely sensitive to any soil disturbance, and therefore even harvesting small amounts can adversely affect the whole rhizomal colony.
In closing, I won’t tell you where I saw this beautiful little forest gem, but this June if you are walking one of the forest loop trails on SḴŦAḴ | Mayne Island, keep your eyes on the ground and see if you can spot it!
References:
1. Kimberley Nature Park Society
2. wildadirondacks.org
3. Wikipedia
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