# Ghost pipe (Monotropa uniflora) *Indian pipe, Indian ghost pipe, corpse plant, ice plant, bird’s nest, fit-root, convulsion-root, pipe plant, ova-ova; *Monotropa uniflora* of Linnaeus, “one turn,” from the single nodding flower* **Known today as.** *Monotropa uniflora*, a leafless, waxy, ivory-white herb of deep shady woods, two to eight inches high, with scales for leaves and one nodding flower that stands upright in fruit: a plant without green that lives through the fungi on the roots of trees, cool and clammy to the touch, melting in the hand like ice, and turning jet-black when it dries. It grows from Maine to Carolina and west to Missouri, and from Florida to Mississippi northward, flowering in July in the North. Kind: Plant > **Caution.** The juice on chapped lips once raised sores, by Millspaugh’s one case; the poisonous principle reported in 1889 was not found in fifty samples in 2025. Its modern use for pain rests on tradition and a survey, not on a trial. ## What was it used for? The Indians, Millspaugh says, valued the juice mixed with water for sore eyes, and Dr. Kunze of New York applied the fresh juice to inflamed eyelids and to the eyes of infants a few days old, and cured a friend’s chronic inflammation of the lids in four weeks. King’s Dispensatory gives the root as a tonic, sedative, nervine, and antispasmodic, used in the fevers, and in the convulsions of children, epilepsy, and chorea, whence the names fit-root and convulsion-root: half a drachm to a drachm of the powder two or three times a day, sometimes with valerian, and “as a substitute for opium, without any deleterious influences.” The juice, alone or with rose-water, for obstinate inflammations of the eye and for ulcers. In eastern Kentucky today the flower is taken for pain, and a recent survey of its use across the United States, as the Kentucky review reports it, found it taken chiefly for pain and also for sleep, grief, anxiety, inflamed eyes, and spiritual well-being. ## What does modern science say? Little. Millspaugh could find no analysis of the plant in 1887, and the review of eastern Kentucky’s medicinal plants in 2025 found that not many pharmacological studies had been done on it: one isolated a fungus, *Penicillium daleae*, from the plant, and from the fungus two cage-like polyketides that regulated neurotransmission in mouse neurons. The one claim of poison has been answered: a single study of 1889 had reported grayanotoxin I, the poison of the rhododendrons, in the plant, and in 2025 mass spectrometry of fifty samples detected neither grayanotoxins nor their analogues, refuting it. The plant has lately seen a rise in consumption across the country, which is why the question was asked. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **none established**: Millspaugh could find no analysis of the plant in 1887; the related *Monotropa hypopitys* yields a volatile oil and methyl salicylate - **grayanotoxins**: reported once in 1889 and not detected in fifty samples by mass spectrometry in 2025 - **penidaleodiolides A and B**: cage-like polyketides from a *Penicillium* isolated from the plant, not from the plant itself, with neurotransmission-regulating activity in mouse neurons **Mechanism.** Unknown. The traditional use for pain has no trial and no identified constituent behind it; the one laboratory finding concerns compounds of a fungus living in the plant. **Dose.** Half a drachm to a drachm of the powdered root two or three times a day, by King’s; the juice to the eye, by Kunze. **Standing.** A plant in revival whose only alleged poison has been looked for and not found, and whose uses rest on nineteenth-century practice and a modern survey. ## What lore surrounds it? Emily Dickinson, thanking her cousins for a sprig of witch-hazel in November 1876, wrote that she had seen it only once before, “and it haunted me like childhood’s Indian pipe, or ecstatic puff-balls, or that mysterious apple that sometimes comes on river-pinks.” The plant that haunts is the plant of the names: corpse plant for its colour, ice plant for its melting in the hand, ghost pipe for its white stem and bowed head. Millspaugh records the one case against it, a young lady who crushed a stem while examining it at home and had the juice driven onto her chapped lips, which swelled and broke into small sores for four or five days, “very much like a mild case of poisoning with *Rhus toxicodendron*”; and that attempts to keep the plant in alcohol turn it bluish-black and tinge the spirit a deep reddish-violet. ## What did the older authorities say? **Charles F. Millspaugh.** “This curious herb well deserves its name of corpse plant, so like is it to the general bluish waxy appearance of the dead; then, too, it is cool and clammy to the touch, and rapidly decomposes and turns black even when carefully handled.” Its medical history begins with the Indians’ use of the juice for sore eyes; the former uses in the spasms of children gave it its popular names. The tincture of the whole fresh plant is a brilliant orange-red by transmitted light, with a bitterish odour and a decidedly sweet taste. Not in the Pharmacopoeia, and no officinal preparation in the Eclectic Materia Medica. **King’s American Dispensatory.** “The whole plant is ivory-white in all its parts, resembling frozen jelly, and is very succulent and tender, so much so that when handled it dissolves and melts away in the hands like ice.” The root, gathered in September and October and kept in well-stopped bottles, is tonic, sedative, nervine, and antispasmodic; it is reputed to have cured remittent and intermittent fevers; in the convulsions of children, epilepsy, and chorea its administration “has been followed with prompt success.” Lasché in 1889 reported a crystallisable poisonous principle in it, andromedotoxin, found in other heaths. “This plant is undoubtedly one of value, and deserving of more confidence and attention than is at present bestowed upon it. It is, however, seldom or never used at the present day.” **Dr. R. E. Kunze, as Millspaugh quotes him.** Woodcock-shooting in a beech grove near Hackensack in early July, he and his friends came on the plant in full bloom, “a space some five feet wide by nine feet long” of snow-white stems and nodding flowers. A friend with chronically inflamed eyelids took to applying the fresh juice of the stems, and “his inflamed lids were entirely cured in four weeks’ time.” Kunze had himself applied it to the eyes of infants only days old, and in old age, “and even where not successfully employed no ill effects have ever been observed thereafter.” ## Sources - Millspaugh, C. F. (1887). *American Medicinal Plants*, vol. 1, no. 105, “Monotropa uniflora,” and Plate 105. Internet Archive, americanmedicina01mill_0. - Felter, H. W., & Lloyd, J. U. (1898). *King’s American Dispensatory*, “Monotropa.—Indian Pipe.” As transcribed at Henriette’s Herbal Homepage, henriettes-herb.com. - Dickinson, E. (1924). Letter to Louisa and Fannie Norcross, November 1876. In M. D. Bianchi (ed.), *The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson*. Internet Archive, lifelettersofemi00unse. - Anez, S. G., Flail, D. B., Burkhart, E. P., & Kellogg, J. J. (2025). Targeted and untargeted mass spectrometry do not detect grayanane-type toxins in *Monotropa uniflora* L. *Journal of Natural Products* 88: 2540–2545. doi:10.1021/acs.jnatprod.5c00805 - Veldhi, P., Crager, C., Ghayur, A., Ul-Haq, Z., & Ghayur, M. N. (2025). A review and survey of local eastern Kentucky medicinal plants and their pharmacological benefits. *Plants* 14: 3182. doi:10.3390/plants14203182 --- *Ghost pipe.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-04. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/ghost-pipe Historical description, not medical advice.