The woods surrounding my home have always seemed magical to me.
When we were kids, my sister and I played witches under large outcroppings of rocks, pretending the mist, dappled throughout the mountain slopes, rising from spring openings, was steaming from witches’ cauldrons.
As an adult, I find a different type of enchantment here: glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, birds that choose these trees to stop in after a flight from South America and much more.
Recently I discovered a new spark of magic — a patch of pink lady slipper flowers. I went looking for the patch, not knowing exactly what I would find. In the woods where I usually rest when looking for summer mushrooms, I’d noticed the leaves before, and identified them as orchid family.
Hoping to see the bloom, I went there recently about a month and a half earlier than usual. Luck was with me, as they were in full bloom when I arrived.
Having seen only photos of this beautiful native wildflower, I was absolutely awed by the stunning pink flowers.
The pouch parts of the large blossoms are vivid pink, with the upper petals a deeper wine color. The leaves growing at the stem’s base are bright green. If you haven’t seen this unusual flower, I recommend seeking it out.
If you find it though, don’t dig it up or pick it. Rare now due to over-harvesting for their medicinal properties, these flowers do not transplant well (one source I read said they have a 5% success rate of transplant).
Used by native people and by European settlers as a tranquilizer to treat insomnia, headaches, spasms and other ailments, the dehydrated and powdered root is supposedly calming.
Not only do these now illusive and striking plants have health benefits (again, please don’t harvest them — there are ubiquitous herbs that provide similar benefits, let’s wait to use this particular plant until population recovers), it is also a trickster.
Lady slippers attract bees by deception. Their fragrance lures native bees (such as a variety of bumblebee species) into entering the slit at the front of the flower pouch. They find no nectar, and the slit closes behind them, trapping the pollinators and giving them only one exit — up past the pollen.
When exiting, the bee accumulates and/or deposits pollen. I wondered how this could be effective — surely bees wouldn’t keep trying more of the same type of flower with no reward.
Then I read that only about one in ten lady slippers are pollinated. Bees are pretty smart after all.
A pollinated flower forms a large seed pod with about 20,000 seeds inside. With so many seeds, you’d think there would still be a decent population even with low germination.
But for these orchids things aren’t smooth sailing even if they twice trick a bee into entering their traps.
Apparently all the little seeds, spread far and wide by the wind, don’t have very good chances at creating life.
Lady slipper seeds lack endosperm — the food source most seeds start off with. Instead they rely on a game of chance. If some of the seeds land on soil containing a specific fungus from the Rhizoctonia genus, they hit the jackpot.
The fungus cracks the seed, which can then start digesting the fungus as it’s first food source.
If all of these things align, and if slugs don’t eat it, the plant may begin to flower after a few years and go on to live for 20 years. These flowers are truly magic.
