The naming of plants is an interesting process.

Plants usually have two names: Their two-part scientific name based on taxonomic classification and a common name usually developed regionally.

As people began to name plants, they used outstanding characteristics of the plant, such as smell, for example, skunk cabbage, or a texture like lamb’s ear or chenille plant.

Plant names such as bleeding heart and bird of paradise mirror parts of the human anatomy or other living things.

And then some common names tell the darker story of plants: Blood Root, Dead Man’s Fingers and Deadly Nightshade Doll’s Eyes.

Here’s another column continuing with the theme for October and Halloween.

Ghost Plant: The ghost plant, Monotropa uniflora, is an odd wildflower that haunts dark and shadowy woods, sometimes alone but often in clusters.

Like an apparition, it is translucent white. Ghost flower is also found in pink, salmon and red. Two other names often heard are Indian pipe or ghost pipe because its distal end is bent like a pipe.

The drooping flower heads can give an impression of penitents bowed in a dismal manner. In this attitude, the ghost pipe will soon turn black and shrivel away.

Lacking chlorophyll, ghost flowers are often mistaken for fungi, but they are angiosperms.

The plant spends most of its life underground but pokes its head straight up above the leaf litter to flower and set seed.

The emergence often occurs after rain, preceded by a dry spell.

If a bumblebee happens upon it, the pollinated bell-shaped flower begins its downward droop and ultimate desiccation.

While a ghost plant flower is a flowering plant, it does not produce its own energy.

In a common manner of speaking, it might be categorized as a taker. Perhaps swindler is a more apt personification.

As a myco-heterotroph, the ghost pipe derives nutrients via mycorrhizal fungi attached to the roots of a tree, such as a beech.

If it gives anything back or offers some service, science has yet to understand what that service might be.

Witch Hazel: The frilly yellow flowers of witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, light up the mid-autumnal woods, lending an air of mystery to passersby.

Not many plants bloom during the cooler months. However, witch hazel has adapted by utilizing thin ribbon-like petals with less surface area than other flowers.

The petals curl up when temperatures drop and unfurl during warm, sunny days.

The tall multi-stemmed native shrub prefers moist roots but will grow on rocky slopes in forested ravines.

Birds and small mammals feed on the fruits, which are small brown capsules, while beavers and deer browse the twigs.

Wasps and flies are its primary pollinators.

Indigenous peoples knew the value of the witch hazel’s medicinal benefits found in the leaves, buds and bark. It contains astringent properties that are now produced as a topical extract worldwide.

One interpretation of the origin of witch hazel’s common name comes from the Anglo-Saxon “wych” meaning to bend.

Another explanation is that it came from witch hazel’s use for dowsing, also known as water witching. Water witching was a method of using a Y-shaped branch to detect underground water.

The Mohegans were the first indigenous peoples to show the English settlers how to use witch hazel for dowsing. Of course, throughout the ages, the practice of dowsing has been thought of as witchery. Witch hazel comes by its name rightly.

Happy Halloween!

“Growing Green” is contributed by Diane Dorn, Lehigh County Extension Office Staff, and Master Gardeners. Information: Lehigh County Extension Office, 610-391-9840; Northampton County Extension Office, 610-813-6613