Some plants don’t fit anywhere. They exist alone, pale as moonlight, in the quiet places between what we know and what we’re afraid to hope for.
Ghost pipe is one of them. And this is the story of how I found it when I needed it most.
The Question
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation about a ring—a carnelian and marcasite Art Deco pinkie ring I wore it when I was going to be working on my etsy shop, it was placed near another ring with my grandmother’s garnet birthstone on it and a silver band next to it that I had handmade in memory of my grandfather.
That conversation opened something in me, it opened my eyes. It made me see, for the first time with real clarity, that I’ve been building a memorial this entire time for someone that my whole soul missed.
Without meaning to. Without planning it. Every herb I choose. Every tarot card I write. Every piece of this work I’m pushing forward with—it’s all been threaded through with my late grandfather, Frank Vernon Forthoffer.
His land.
His lessons about plants.
His presence in how I move through the world.
I wear his name on my hands every single day. My daughter is named after him. This whole thing is him. And sitting in that realization, I found myself in my bathroom that afternoon, looking out the window at the land that used to be his, and I asked him a question I’d been too afraid to speak aloud:
Are you proud of me? Do you see what I’m trying to do here? Does this honor you?
I had chosen years before to start a journey to better my life and the lives of my children by self teaching graphic design and e-commerce. My time in a regular job was taking the one thing from me that I was working for to begin with. Time with my children. Something that I had very little of at the time and desperately needed more of.
My grandfather was a pivotal person in my childhood and he was the only reason I ever felt good enough. The only reason I ever did anything to my full potential. Or maybe he was just the only one who ever really acknowledged that I had and that was something that once it was gone, well it was devastating.
I needed a sign. Something undeniable. Something only he could send. So I asked out loud, unapologetic with tears streaming down my face and grief in my heart. Pap, thats what we all called him, are you proud of me? If you are still seeing me here and see what I’m working towards with my online learning, please send me a sign.
Im going to be honest, I half expected something simple like a cardinal or a butterfly but Pap wasn’t a man who just simply did anything. If he was going to do it, it was going to be something special.
Something only I would totally understand, like a secret for just him and I.
Day One: The Fringeless Orchid
The next morning, as I was driving my daughter and son to go swimming we passed by his barn lot. The property where I spent my childhood with him learning and growing and as we did I noticed a sudden flash of pink in the weeds.
Nothing big just a small flash that only I would have noticed it didn’t belong there. The weeds were neck high but I knew what I saw so I put the car in reverse and parked right there on the side of the road.
I hadn’t grabbed my shoes because the pool was at a families house down the road so I yelled to my daughter to check the back for shoes. I was going down the embankment into the tall grass and figure out what was growing in there. I knew of all the wildflowers in our specific area but this was not one that I had ever seen.
Down the embankment I went in just my daughter’s pink and yellow Peeps house shoes, which were way too small and through the possibly snake infested weeds until I got close enough to quickly snag one for myself. (hindsight i should have taken a photo but in the rush I had forgotten my phone)
And there, growing alone in the grass, was an orchid I’d never seen before.
A purple fringeless orchid.
Rare.
Specific.
Growing exactly where he and I had spent our time together growing up.
I stood there and I knew.
He heard me.
The answer was yes. It wasn’t enough to find one. The signs kept coming. It deepened.
Day Two: Confirmation Window
The very next day, my daughter and I went back to his pond—the water just outside where his bedroom window used to be.
And there, growing impossibly in that exact spot, was a second orchid.
Another confirmation.
The answer getting louder. Harder to ignore. It was just like him to dote on me like that. He was never just a little proud. It poured out of him like a cup overfilled. You knew how much he loved you. How proud you had made him without question.
But we didn’t stop there.
We walked to the creek that runs through the property, the water right near where he had shown me the first plant you could pick wild and eat. Peppermint, the leaves he had shown me you could chew and they taste just like mouthwash. It was my first moment in herbalism. We were standing in that creek bottom, my daughter and I looking at different fungi and had found a stink horn fungi when I said to her. I sure wish I could find a ghost pipe, now those are a neat looking plant. Pap showed me my first one and I bet he would show us one if he were here.
So aloud I said to him:
Show us ghost pipe.
I didn’t whisper it. I didn’t ask tentatively.
I spoke it into existence.
I named what I wanted to find and I asked him to show us.
The Ghost Pipe
And within minutes—or maybe it was seconds, time felt strange—as we made our way to the house from the stink horn we had found… we found it!
Not one.
A cluster.
Pale, translucent, those little faces with the reddish-brown centers turned toward something we couldn’t see. It was unbelievable to me. He was not only proud of what I was doing but was helping me teach his namesake. My daughter had seen her first ghost pipe that Pap had led her to.
Ghost pipe doesn’t photosynthesize. It feeds on fungi, on the invisible networks beneath the soil.
It exists in a web of relationships hidden from sight. Like my relationship now with him.
It’s the plant that exists alone but not. The one outside the wheel.
The one that doesn’t fit into the systems we’ve built to understand botany.
And it was there.
It was exactly there.
What Ghost Pipe Teaches
Ghost pipe (Monotropa uniflora) is called by many names: Indian pipe, corpse plant, ghost flower.
It blooms in summer and early fall, preferring the deep shade and rich soil of old forests—the kind of places where death feeds life.
Where fallen things become nutrients for what’s growing.
Medicinally, it’s been used (cautiously, traditionally) to ease pain and anxiety, to soothe nervous tension. Some herbalists describe it as a plant for times when you need to release what you’ve been holding. To let the weight down. To trust that the nutrients from what’s broken are feeding something new.
Magically, it’s a plant of the liminal spaces. Of communication with what’s unseen. Of finding signs in the dark places. Of knowing that what looks like nothing—like a ghost, like absence—is actually full of invisible life.
When I found that ghost pipe, I was holding three things at once: grief for my grandfather, gratitude that he’s still present, and the absolute certainty that this work I’m doing—this creative inheritance I didn’t know I was building—matters.
That it honors him.
That he sees it. He is proud of it and he was still here to help me with it.
The Common Names
Ghost pipe teaches us through its names.
In some places it’s called corpse plant, a name that sounds morbid but isn’t—it’s a plant that feeds on death, transforms it, makes it part of the living network. In others, it’s Indian pipe, a name that speaks to its shape, those little nodding heads like medicine pipes passing between worlds.
My grandfather taught me that names are windows. They tell you what people saw when they looked at something. Ghost pipe tells us that someone, at some point, saw death made visible and recognized it as necessary. As part of the conversation.
Growing & Finding Ghost Pipe
Ghost pipe doesn’t grow from seed the way other plants do. It needs the right fungal partnership, the right soil, the right age of forest.
And when you find it, you recognize it immediately. There’s nothing else like it. Nothing else so pale, so quiet, so undeniably there.
The Heart of the Apothecary
I am so glad you found your way here into The Heart of the Apothecary. The place where I share more than just plants and their uses. Its a place where I can share why these plants matter to me and give you a glimpse inside my heart.
This is what I mean when I talk about “the heart of the apothecary.” It’s not just about knowing plants. It’s about knowing why the plants matter.
About understanding that every single botanical correspondence, every virtue, every elemental association—it’s all rooted in someone’s real experience of grief, growth, inheritance, and the absolute necessity of being seen.
My grandfather is proud of me.
The ghost pipe told me so. And now, every time I see one—or wear the memory of one—I’m saying thank you.
I’m saying I heard you.
I’m saying this work is for you, and it honors you, and I’m going to keep doing it.
The plant outside the wheel has its own circle after all.
Ready to wear your own ghost pipe sign?
I created a tote bag for the herbalist and the dreamers to carry the things they collect in. One that honors this story and theirs as well.
The Ghost Pipe tote is available here, photographed with real ghost pipe from the creek where this story happened.
If you’re grieving someone you love and wondering if they’re proud of you, if they’re still with you—I see you.
Ask them for a sign.
Plants are the language they know how to speak.
And as I found out they speak in the rarest ones.
