These beautiful flowers are not orchids, of course, but in Vietnamese they are called “lan thủy tinh” — or “glass orchids”. I once saw them in the semi-darkness of the rainforest, among fallen leaves — small bluish-white, translucent shoots… At first I thought they were some kind of chlorophyll-free orchids and even added their photo to a general album of Dalat forest orchids.

This time we came across the flowers of Monotropastrum humile that were already beginning to wilt, but they had not lost their exotic beauty. We had to illuminate them with a flashlight — on the dark slope of the hill, under the canopy of the evening forest, they were almost invisible to the naked eye, and it was a small miracle that we noticed them on the path. They became the main character of this painting. Monotropastrum humile is a species of mycoheterotrophic plant in the family Ericaceae. It lacks chlorophyll and is therefore unable to perform photosynthesis, obtaining sugars and nutrients from mycorrhizal fungi instead.