Yellow Bird's-nest - Hypopitys monotropa

Plants are fleshy and grow 10?35 cm tall. The part of the plant which emerges from the soil is unbranched. All parts of the plant are pale yellowish white to reddish-tinged. The flowers are whitish tubular bells 9 to 12 mm long, born in a nodding spike.

Provide a photograph of the plant in its habitat. It is on the VC55 Rare Plant Register, and therefore a specimen should not be taken.  Take detailed field photos and submit to NatureSpot as soon as possible; and if you think you have found it in a new location, inform the County Recorder as soon you can. (RPR)

Damp wooded areas.

June to September.

Perennial. Unlike most plants, it does not contain chlorophyll; it is a myco-heterotroph, getting its food through parasitism upon fungi rather than photosynthesis. These fungi form a mycorrhiza with nearby tree species.

Very local in southern England and scarce or rare elsewhere in Britain.

Very rare in Leicestershire and Rutland; only known to be present in one site.

It is listed on the current VC55 Rare Plant Register (Hall and Woodward 2022) as Locally Rare (i.e. present in less than 3 sites)