Wild yellow lady slipper

[Lizgeo]

Nice find.

I believe it's called Cypripedium parviflorum or calceolus. I also saw them in Jasper National Park, but it blooms in June upper in Northern Rockies.

[Brutal_Dreamer]

LOVE these slippers. So cool that you just found them like that. Lucky you!!

cheers,
BD

[OrchidAddict]

I believe they are protected, and is not legal to collect them from the wild. Some times you can buy them through a catalog or in a plant nursery and they can be very expensive ($80-$130). The problem with trying to grow them at home is that they are very fussy with the specific chemistry of the medium they grow in. We had a speaker in our orchid society once, talking about cultivating Cypripediums and let me tell you, it is very complicated. It involves layers of leaf molt, peat moss, and sand in a raised bed, as well as, perfect moisture and perfect sun exposure. It is so much more fun to find to find them in the wild. Interestingly, every time I find them, they grow right by the road.

Ania, you're right--they're protected (I did some research on them). Not that I would just go stealing flowers from a national park anyway... LOL...it was more of a statement about how hard they would be to resist. Sadly, in what I found online, it looks like they are dying out in the wild because of how finicky they are about their growing conditions. I did, however, find a couple of places that are selling them online (artificially propagated in a lab, of course)...and one place was selling them for as little as $6 a plant (with a minimum of six plants of one species in an order)! They had pictures that said "These could look like THIS in your garden!" and there'd be a pic of all of these Cypripediums all happily growing together with wildflowers. Ironically, I don't think the pic was an actual garden...I think it was an indoor setup specifically designed to replicate the LOOK of a garden. From what you're describing it would be nearly impossible to grow them alongside wildflowers anyway. Sounds like I'll just be enjoying them in photographs! But this has been an exciting thread...I never even knew about this particular variety of wild orchid! Thanks for adding your expertise!

[ang709]

Lovely blooms! Thank you for sharing.