I remember seeing quite a bit of disturbing imagery when researching mycotrophic plants (which get nutrients from soil fungi and frequently don't have any cholrophyll). Maybe it's because they lack the usual green and leafy identifying features of plants. Some of them are bordering on the nightmarish.
For some reason, I just made the connection to the flowers of Minas Morgul, whose description I always loved. Now I can confirm, there are definitely some mycotrophic plants on the foothills of Mordor:
"Wide flats lay on either bank, shadowy meads filled with pale white flowers. Luminous these were too, beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms in an uneasy dream; and they gave forth a faint sickening charnel-smell; an odour of rottenness filled the air."
Another example is the "Indian pipe", Monotropa_uniflora. It's completely white, and very beautiful. It is a myco-heterotroph, getting its food through parasitism upon fungi rather than photosynthesis.
On the other hand, there are non-plants that are green and have chloroplasts. I cultured them from pond water in high school Biology. Interesting creatures.
Though, these days they're technically not plants. Red and brown algae have been moved out of the kingdom of Plantae, as they are believed to have developed photosynthesis independently.
After moving to Southern California I stumbled across these while hiking in the mountains. At first I was sure that they were a fungus. Turns out, they're a plant. Red, parasitic, plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcodes
Medical herbalist, Yarrow Willard enthuses about these 'saprophytes' in this video[1] Many will find his outlook completely fanciful ( he says they are nervines of the forest) but I think its positive and he is experienced in ways.
It's so bright orange that at first I wondered if it was spray paint left behind from construction. There's loads of it around the Bay Trail behind Google.
I learned about this recently from a Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't youtube video, searching for rare ferns on Mt Shasta: https://youtu.be/h0Eor4YaO2U?t=541
The narration is mildly NSFW, depending on which part of the video you watch; the video footage itself is 100% SFW.
I learned about the CPBBD channel from a HN post a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041193 -- he's a very sharp botanist and his coarse language and heavy-duty Chicago accent all make for entertaining videos.
Doing some reading through wiki about non-green plants I came across thermogenic plants. Not only can some plants exists without chlorophyll, some can also regulate their temperature.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 44.1 ms ] threadHydnora africana is mentioned in the article: https://www.google.com/search?q=Hydnora+africana&tbm=isch
Monotropa uniflora: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/49477-Monotropa-uniflora
"Wide flats lay on either bank, shadowy meads filled with pale white flowers. Luminous these were too, beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms in an uneasy dream; and they gave forth a faint sickening charnel-smell; an odour of rottenness filled the air."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euglena
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_algae
Edit: Another similar plant which grow all around where I grew up in Maine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotropa_uniflora
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI8s01q0Ojk
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuscuta_californica
It's so bright orange that at first I wondered if it was spray paint left behind from construction. There's loads of it around the Bay Trail behind Google.
The narration is mildly NSFW, depending on which part of the video you watch; the video footage itself is 100% SFW.
I learned about the CPBBD channel from a HN post a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041193 -- he's a very sharp botanist and his coarse language and heavy-duty Chicago accent all make for entertaining videos.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermogenesis