I thought I had the whole taxonomy thing reasonably figured out. Particularly plants. What could be easier to catergorize than a plant?
Multicellular, Autotrophic. Very simple.
Until someone told me about Indian Pipe, a plant without chlorophyll. I was sure they were confused and had mistaken a fungus for a plant. However after some research, it is I who is thoroughly confused. Indian Pipe seems to have fungal characteristics but it is still considered a plant. What gives?
Hah, I thought you were going to be asking if there were any plants without chlorophyll and I was ready to jump in and say “Indian Pipe”! I see it in the woods around my house quite often
It produces seed instead of spores. That completely by itself puts it into the Plant Kingdom.
Because of seeds its a plant? That sounds ridiculous to me. Who decided that this characteristic supercedes the need to be photosynthetic?
Apparently it’s got flowers and everything. Dunno what bee would visit that ugly thing, though.
Related question: why does it have leaves?
Less interesting related question: why would get rid of its chlorophyll completely, instead of simply being both an autotroph and a parasite?
That’s actually a relative recent classification of “plants”. When I was first learning my biology, back in the 1950s, everything was pretty much shoehorned in to only two kingdoms, plants and animals. Fungi were plants; bacteria were considered a type of fungus.
It was only in the 1960s that it began to be recognized that the Two Kingdom system was inadequate, and the additional kingdoms of Monera, Protista, and Fungi were recognized. But even this Five Kingdom is inadequate; there are even more fundamental divisions, and a Three Domain system, splitting the Monera into the Bacteria and Archaea, with everything else in the Eucaryota. Protists themselves are polyphyletic; they contain many lineages as different from one another as the Plants, Animals, and Fungi are, many of which could be recognized as kingdoms themselves.
The differences between Plantae and Fungi are much more fundamental than autotroph/heterotroph. For example, plants have cell walls made out of cellulose, while those of fungi are made of chitin.
The modern Plantae is variously defined by different taxonomists.
The narrowest definition is multicellular land plants (most of which have chlorophyll).
Many taxonomists would also include the Chlorophyta or green algae (both multicellular and unicellular) in this group, since they are very closely related. Others would also include red algae and a few other types of algae.
Indian Pipe, by virtue of its basic structure, is clearly a flowering plant and a member of the Plantae, even though it has secondarily lost its chlorophyll. Other than the lack of chlorophyll, it has nothing in common with fungi.
It’s the same principle as ostriches still being classified as birds even though they can’t fly, or whales as mammals even though they mostly lack hair.
And don’t miss:
snow plant
pine drops
and numerous species of coralroot
among others.
Also dodder and beechdrops.
More on these mycotrophs, which are indirectly parasitic on other plants via a relationship with a fungus.
I, for one, welcome our new lichen overlords.
The short answer is that the Indian Pipe is a plant, because it’s descended from other things that were clearly plants. It’d make the taxonomy too messy, if we had to invent a new classification every time a plant lost its chlorophyll.
There’s also the cactus Gymnocalycium mihanovichii, which has a mutant form with no chlorophyll. This is bright red, and only survives when grafted onto another, green, cactus. You’ve probably seen them.
(A lot of images of these things call the red part a “flower”, which is nonsense. It’s the body of the cactus. Sometimes the red cactus can flower itself, though.)
