Location Taken: Rainbow Falls Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010
I’ve got a special place in my heart for Lady’s Slipper flowers. There’s some that grow in my grandmother’s woods in Michigan, where they are rather rare, so I was always told not to pick them, and to be careful around them. I haven’t seen any there for a bit, though, so hopefully they’re still growing there…
This photo wasn’t taken in Michigan, though it was taken near the Great Lakes, in the provincial park I mentioned two days ago right on the top of Lake Superior. This particular one’s a Pink Lady’s Slipper. I know, quite the original name. You can call it a Moccasin Flower if you prefer, though it doesn’t flow quite as elegantly as Lady’s Slipper. I’ve also got some pictures of some yellow Lady’s Slippers from the same park. Unlike in Michigan, the area’s largely undisturbed (there’s a highway, some small coastal towns and, um, nature), so these somewhat delicate flowers can thrive just fine there.
As for why they’re called that, it’s pretty obvious, really. It looks like a delicate slipper. It’s even more obvious with other species of Lady’s Slipper. The Pink Lady’s Slipper is lacking the round opening that most Lady’s Slippers have, instead having a simple split where the petal curves around. With the round opening and the egg-shaped flower, it really does look like a simple shoe.
You know, you usually think of orchids as hot-weather plants, but Lady’s Slippers are orchids too, and they grow rather far north. One species, the Sparrow’s Egg Lady’s Slipper, even grows in the far northern reaches of Canada and Alaska. Its southernmost extent barely touches the US, in Montana. There’s another, the rather lovely Spotted Lady’s Slipper that’s only found in Alaska, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, not even coming as far south as, say, Saskatchewan. Somehow I doubt these flowers would be comfortable in standard hothouses. But it does mean that part of the world is far more colorful than most people realize.
