Fall is an optimal time for pinedrops fans to turn on, tune in and drop out of society and into the search for our beloved pinedrops.
Why do we love them so? Perhaps because they're saprophytes. Like the creative class, they depend on others to produce what sustains them, repaying necessity with conspicuity. They flourish in shady coniferous forests, where they shack up with mycorrhizal fungi in the roots of pine trees. The fungi process humus for them, effectively offering them a straw inserted in the death-flavored Faygo that is the forest floor.
Since they steal their lunch, they can skip photosynthesis. With little use for chlorophyll, they maintain an all-year red like the lipstick in a Roy Lichtenstein.
In Spring, pinedrops produce droopy white flowers shaped like inverted tears, which hew close to their single, fuzzy stem. By late summer, the entire plant has dried out and resembles something you might find at an upscale version of the Hobby Lobby's DIY fall decor section.
There is no data on whether woodland fairies climb their dried flowers like the rungs on a ladder or catapult themselves from the tops of their springy stems.
Pinedrops are a rare, delicate plant, fussy about their environs. Pterospora andromedea enthusiasts "collect" mental images of them in memory baskets. Some may choose to add a warty gourd or some purple maize.
Once more common in the East, pinedrops are "listed as threatened in Michigan, and endangered in New York, Vermont, and Wisconsin," according to the Forest Service. They can be found, in ones and twos, throughout more densely forested areas of the Black Hills.