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.

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.

Rare in Leicestershire and Rutland.