Moneses uniflora
One-flowered Wintergreen

Moneses uniflora
©Bob Gibbons/ Plantlife

This delightful plant used to be called St Olaf’s Candlestick, and when you see it, you can see why. It has a single nodding white flower at the top of a stem, and a rosette of leaves at the base.

One-flowered Wintergreen grows in the damper parts of Scots pine forests in the hills of north-east Scotland, where it shows up brightly above the dark soil and dark dropped needles. The disappearance of the old Caledonian Forest is the main reason for its decline, and most current sites are in the commercial pine plantations. One site has thousands of plants, but the others only contain small groups with doubtful long term prospects, particularly as it is destroyed by the harvesting of commercial forests.

Classified as Vulnerable.