Hey...Lookie here

[TundraKev]

I did a little searching and found a picture of part of one of the clumps at Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden.

[ATester]

Hard to transplant aye... Darn... my evil plans to have one has been foiled again...

You have to watch out because depending on where you are it may be illegal for you to transplant them. In the state of Massachussetts I have found out that the state doesn't like it when you touch endagered flowers (not from personal experience mind you). In my state it was supposed by many for a long time that it was illegal to even look at them, however I did some research and what they are refered to as "a plant of special concern", mostly due to the flowers and people picking them. However, the state is apparently not collecting any data regarding their range, where the colonies are located and such (interesting that they would be "concerned").

Bench...do you have any native Cyps in your neck of the woods?

[justlearning!!]

The one I took the close-up of a couple of weeks ago was moved into one of my flower beds a few years back... shhhhh

I can't imagine seeing a clump 3 feet across!! I have lots of little clumps in the woods, and one area where there are at least 10 little clumps on both sides of a path... but even my biggest ones only have 2 or 3 blooms at the most.

Kev, are the flowers in the picture you posted what "native" ladyslippers look like in your area? Those look so much fancier than ours... lol

[TundraKev]

Yep, that's our state flower. I think there are also some yellow ones, but I'm not too up on these. I believe the clump at this garden is close to 100 years old. At least that's about how old the garden is and most of the plants there were planted by Eloise Bulter way back when.

It's really interesting reading her biography. In it she talks about walking through fields and fields of yellow lady slippers in areas around Minneapolis. Of course those are all now suburbs of the city and nothing like that remains.

[bench72]

Bench...do you have any native Cyps in your neck of the woods?

I think Cyps are northern hemisphere plants... so here "down under" we don't have anything of that sort.

We do have quite an amazing variety of terrestrials including some very pretty blue orchids, ie Thelymitras and Caladenias.

I do love those Cyps though, maybe it's that Imelda Marcos in me... gotta get more slippers...

Cheers
Tim

[montanum]

Rhizome is correct. The do increase both in size by adding eyes (buds) to their rhizome (cf: http://www.uslink.net/~scl/cacaule2l.jpg ) as well as sexually. Seed germinates on the order of .005% naturally, so you may only see one seedling every few years that it produces pods, which is once every several years. All in all, undesturbed, a single plant may produce a new seedling once every 5 to 10 years, though it may be locally higher. Lucky these plants live a long time...

Best,
Ross

[peteMc]

Those are the plants that convinced me hobbits were real...thought they were living in the woods in my old neighborhood as a kid, on Cape Cod.

beautiful.