Ghost pipes can be found in Virginia forests from June to September.
Richmond’s forests are full of ghosts, if you know where to find them.
Ghost pipes, a native Virginia wildflower, are perhaps one of the oddest flora in the commonwealth. Designated the Virginia Native Plant Society’s Wildflower of the Year for 2026, the mysterious, translucent flower blooms here from June to September and is often mistaken for a mushroom.
“Ecologically, [ghost pipes] have an interesting, very peculiar, very uncommon role because they aren’t photosynthetic at all,” says Dr. John Hayden, a professor of biology at the University of Richmond, who serves on the VNPS board. “They get all their nutrients from fungi that inhabit their roots.”
The parasitic plants, which sprout from 2 to 8 inches tall, have a sneaky association with mycorrhizal fungi. The flowers trick these soil microbes into thinking there is a mutualistic relationship, but they’re actually greedily taking nutrients they receive from surrounding tree roots. This feeding process can go on for months before there’s enough energy for a ghost pipe cluster to emerge. When it does, anywhere from three to 10 stems surface, each of which has its own exclusive “pipe.”
The flowers grow in obscure sites, making them difficult to find, but there are a few clues one can follow to potentially spot some — the most important is searching the right location.
“You’ll not find [ghost pipes] outside of the forest around Richmond,” Hayden says. The flowers often haunt mixed hardwood forests that are packed with deciduous trees such as oaks, tulip poplars and maples. The large, tall trees provide plenty of shade and a moist floor full of leaf litter, creating the perfect conditions for ghost pipes.
“The plant will be there, but down in the soil under leaf litter. When ready to flower, they appear relatively quickly,” Hayden says. Ghost pipes tend to pop up after a heavy rain. Once sprouted, the flowers last for about a week.
In Richmond, there are a few public hardwood forests to explore, including Forest Hill Park, Bryan Park and the Carillon Woods. “If you look hard enough and spend time in the woods and get lucky, you’ll find them,” Hayden says.
While most ghost pipes are white, they are sometimes pink or (more rarely) red. Those hues tend to be more common farther west, perhaps signaling a separate species or a genetic variation with that specific population.
Despite producing nectar, ghost pipes barely have any scent. They rely heavily on bumblebees for pollination — a phenomenon that fascinated Richmond-based artist Katie Pelikan (a contributor to Richmond magazine and R•Home).
The owner of Pelikan Print Co., Pelikan won third place in this year’s Virginia Native Plant Society’s Wildflower of the Year T-shirt design contest. Learning about the bees during her research for the artwork, she drew a few of the insects hovering around a cluster of flowers.
“Ghost pipes are very ephemeral and translucent, so it was a fun challenge to translate them into my flat style suited for screen printing,” Pelikan says, adding that, as a child, she saw ghost pipes in the forest behind her grandparents’ house, but, like many, originally confused them with mushrooms.
Part of the heath, or heather, family, ghost pipes are related to plants such as blueberries, azaleas and rhododendrons. “It’s a very interesting, oddball member of that family,” Hayden says. Many heaths form true mutualistic relationships with soil fungi, unlike their parasitic relative. “[Ghost pipes] aren’t totally unique, [but they’re] representative of the mode of life found in the heath family,” he adds.
Once a ghost pipe is pollinated, its head turns upward, eventually fading into a brownish-black stalk as it fruits and disperses seeds. Sometimes, the dried stems stand through the winter looking unearthly and frozen.
Ghost pipes are found throughout the United States, Asia, Central America and northern South America. Unlike many native flowers, however, ghost pipes can’t be cultivated by humans. They develop seeds, but their feeding requirements are so strict that even if a seed were planted in a container, it wouldn’t grow; they can’t be transplanted, either.
Virginia ghost pipe populations aren’t currently threatened, but forest conservation is important to ensure their future. Foraging is discouraged, because plucking them from their roots can destroy the entire network. Ghost pipes are so delicate that even touching them gently can bruise the plant or cause it to seemingly melt — a reason they are sometimes called ice plants.
This summer, consider going on a ghost hunt in the woods. It will require patience and a keen eye, but spotting these bizarre wildflowers rewards the spirit.
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