The Mysterious Plants That Look Like Mushrooms

A September field guide to Thismia, the tiny plants that live by borrowing from fungi

There is a world on the forest floor that is easy to mistake for a fairy tale.

Tiny, strange flowers emerge from wet leaf litter. Some look like lanterns. Others resemble miniature crowns, alien mouths, or something that should belong to a fungus rather than a flowering plant.

But Thismia is not a mushroom.

It is a genus of flowering plants in the family Thismiaceae, and its members are among the most extraordinary examples of myco-heterotrophic plants: plants that have abandoned photosynthesis and obtain their carbon through relationships with fungi instead.

And this September, there is an especially good reason to pay attention.

A newly described Thai species, Thismia daemona, was published in August 2026. Its almost black flower, horn-like structures and extremely restricted known population have made it one of the year's most remarkable botanical discoveries. The species was assessed as Critically Endangered in the original scientific description.

Important correction to a common assumption: September is not universally the single best month to find every Thismia species. Flowering depends strongly on species, rainfall and locality. But September is a particularly fascinating month for several species and for the wider story of these elusive plants.

What exactly is Thismia?

At first glance, Thismia can look more like a fungus than a plant.

Most species are achlorophyllous, meaning they contain no chlorophyll and cannot photosynthesize. They have tiny, scale-like leaves rather than the familiar green foliage of ordinary plants. Much of the organism remains hidden underground or among the leaf litter, appearing above ground only briefly when it flowers or fruits.

Kew's Plants of the World Online currently recognizes more than 120 accepted species in the genus, with Thismia distributed across tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Australasia and the Americas.

That diversity is part of what makes the genus so exciting. There is no single "Thismia look."

There are fairy-lantern shapes, mitre-like flowers, strange appendages, translucent tissues and colors ranging from pale cream to deep red, blue-green and almost black.

The secret is underground

The most fascinating part of Thismia may not be the flower at all.

It is the fungal relationship beneath the soil.

A myco-heterotrophic plant does not simply "eat fungi" in the everyday sense. Instead, it taps into a fungal-based nutrient network. The fungi associated with Thismia can connect the plant to a larger ecological system, allowing carbon and nutrients ultimately derived from other plants to reach the otherwise non-photosynthetic Thismia.

That means the tiny flower you notice on the forest floor is only the visible tip of a much larger biological story.

Think of it as a plant that has outsourced its solar-powered lifestyle.

The Devil Thismia: Thismia daemona

One of the strangest new members of the genus is Thismia daemona, a species described from Thailand in 2026.

Thismia daemona, the Devil Thismia

Thismia daemona was found among leaf litter in shaded lower montane forest with small bamboo at around 950 to 970 metres elevation in Thong Pha Phum National Park, western Thailand.

Its appearance is extraordinary. The flower is predominantly blackish, with reddish-orange fleshy outer tepals and a mitre-like structure bearing three slender appendages. Its unusual shape inspired the species name daemona, giving it the feel of a tiny botanical creature hiding in the forest floor.

The scientific description combined detailed morphological observations with molecular phylogenetic evidence. The researchers assessed the species as Critically Endangered, highlighting how quickly a newly described organism can become a conservation concern.

The species is a reminder that even in a country with a long history of botanical exploration, forests can still contain organisms that science has only just begun to recognize.

The Owl-Eyed Thismia: Thismia thaithongiana

If T. daemona looks like a tiny forest creature, Thismia thaithongiana looks almost as if it is staring back at you.

Thismia thaithongiana, the Owl-Eyed Thismia

Known in Thailand as Phitsawong Thai Thong, and popularly called the Owl-Eyed Thismia, this tiny plant is endemic to Thailand and is known from Doi Hua Mot in Umphang Wildlife Sanctuary, Tak Province.

Its flower is only a few millimetres across, with a green appearance and two striking eye-like structures that make the whole flower resemble the face of a miniature owl. Reports from Thailand describe it as appearing during the late rainy season, with recent observations in August and September and flowering continuing toward October.

The species was formally described in 2018 as Thismia thaithongiana. Its type specimen was collected at Doi Hua Mot in October 2014.

Like other members of the genus, it is a myco-heterotrophic plant. Its strange appearance is only the visible part of a much more complicated relationship involving fungi in the soil.

Why September is special, but not everywhere

This is where the calendar becomes interesting.

Different Thismia species have different flowering windows. For example, Thismia thaithongiana, an endangered species endemic to a single mountain in Thailand, flowers during the late rainy season, September to October. Historical field records of Thismia angustimitra also include a September discovery in northeastern Thailand.

Meanwhile, other species follow completely different schedules. Thismia arachnites, for example, has been recorded flowering and fruiting from May to August in Thailand and Malaysia. A recent study of Thismia gardneriana in southern Thailand found its peak flowering in May and no plants observed in September during the study's seasonal surveys.

So September is not a universal Thismia season.

It is something more interesting: a season that can reveal particular species in particular forests.

For a field naturalist, that distinction matters.

Small enough to miss, important enough to matter

Searching for Thismia changes the way you look at a forest.

You stop looking only at trees.

You start looking at the centimetres beneath them.

A patch of moss. A layer of wet leaves. A dark piece of soil. A tiny unusual shape that seems almost too small to be a flower.

Some Thismia species are only a few millimetres across at the floral scale, while stems can reach several centimetres depending on the species. Their tiny size and short above-ground appearance make them exceptionally easy to overlook.

And because many species are rare or narrowly distributed, finding one is not simply a matter of knowing what it looks like. You need to know when, where, and under what ecological conditions to look.

Where might you find one?

Thismia occurs in tropical and subtropical forests across a surprisingly broad part of the world, including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Japan, India, Australia and parts of tropical America.

But that does not mean you can walk into any wet forest and expect to find one.

Species can be highly localized. Some are known from only a small number of sites, and some have been rediscovered after decades or described from a single mountain, forest or protected area.

The best approach is therefore not to treat Thismia as a treasure-hunt target.

Treat it as a microhabitat indicator.

Look for the kind of forest floor where moisture, leaf litter, shade, soil conditions and fungal communities create the right combination, then let the forest reveal what is there.

A word of caution for hunters

If you find a Thismia, resist the temptation to collect it.

For rare plants, the location itself can be more valuable than the specimen. Photograph it in place, record the habitat and locality as appropriate, and follow the rules of the protected area or land manager.

Never dig up an unknown Thismia just to get a better photograph.

The underground part may be essential to the organism's survival, and the surrounding fungal network is part of the story too.

The strange lesson of Thismia

There is something wonderfully unsettling about these plants.

They remind us that the forest is not built around the things we normally notice.

The giant trees are obvious. The birds are loud. The orchids are spectacular.

But beneath them, hidden in a few centimetres of leaf litter, there can be a plant that has abandoned leaves, abandoned chlorophyll and almost completely disappeared from our everyday idea of what a plant is supposed to be.

And yet it is still a plant.

Still flowering.

Still evolving.

Still connected to fungi, soil, trees and the invisible biological machinery of the forest.

That is why Thismia belongs in this blog.

Not because it is a mushroom.

But because it is proof that the boundary between the worlds of plants and fungi is far stranger than we usually imagine.

Research & Further Reading

The Fantastic Mushroom and Where to Find It is about real organisms, real science and real places. If a claim sounds too strange to be true, that is usually a good reason to check the source.

The Mysterious Plants That Look Like Mushrooms: A September Field Guide to Thismia