The Pink Lady Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), sometimes called the Moccasin Flower, is one of the largest native orchids in eastern North America, and is fairly common in the woodlands in Bourne. In fact, I have some growing at the wooded periphery of my yard. Each Pink Lady Slipper plant has two basal leaves with conspicuous parallel veins and a center stalk with a single hanging bulbous pink slipper-like flower. The pouch formed by the flower’s petals is actually an ingenious trap to lure gullible bees into pollinating the plant.  A bee that enters the flower looking for nectar cannot exit the way it entered.  Instead, it must crawl to the back of the flower, rubbing against the the flower’s pollinia (a solid mass of pollen), which will adhere to the bee’s back.  Assuming this same bee then visits a second Pink Lady Slipper, this pollen will be deposited on the female stigma in the same manner.  However, because the flower emits a nectar-like odor but produces no nectar, many bees are quick to realize the folly of entering additional lady slipper flowers which would produce no reward, and so only a few of the flowers are pollinated each season.

As a child I was always told not to pick Pink Lady Slippers because “they were endangered”. However, although this species does have protected status in a few states (New York, Illinois, Georgia and Tennessee), it holds no special status federally or in Massachusetts specifically.  The confusion probably arises because other species of lady slipper, such as the Showy Lady Slipper (Cypripedium reginae), are classified as rare and endangered within the state. Regardless of the Pink Lady Slipper’s lack of protected status, however, it is not advisable to pick them as they take many years to mature (and each plant can live 20 years or more) and they spread slowly. So picking just a few plants could take decades to replace.  Additionally, seeds must germinate in the right habitat and in the presence of a symbiotic fungus in order to survive.