The snow plant takes advantage of this mutualism by tapping into the network and stealing sugars from the photosynthetic partner by way of the fungus.

[7][9] Due to its unique and striking appearance, coupled with its relatively limited geographic distribution, S. sanguinea has been a popular subject of various California naturalists.

Soon after the snow is off the ground, it rises through the dead needles and humus in the pine and fir woods like a bright glowing pillar of fire....

It is said to grow up through the snow; on the contrary, it always waits until the ground is warm, though with other early flowers it is occasionally buried or half-buried for a day or two by spring storms....

Without fragrance, it stands beneath the pines and firs lonely and silent, as if unacquainted with any other plant in the world; never moving in the wildest storms; rigid as if lifeless, though covered with beautiful rosy flowers.In 1939, former University of California, Berkeley professor William Whittingham Lyman Jr. published a poem book called California Wild Flowers, in which he dedicated a poem to "The Snow Plant";[11] Are you a blood red hyacinth Transported strangely To these cold Sierra solitudes?