Pink Lady's Slipper is an
interesting wildflower in the Orchid Family. They are
endangered in some areas because they take a long time to
grow, and because people collect them.
This plant has only two
leaves.
They are green and branch out from the center of the plant.
A single flower stalk
also grows from the center.
The deep pink
flower,
which many people say looks like a slipper, grows about
three inches long. Unlike most flowers you see, this flower
is closed tightly except for a small opening in the
front.
Pink Lady's Slippers grow
in shady forests under pine trees, oaks, Red Maple, and
Sweetgum. Some other plants that grow alongside them include
Greenbrier and Sassafras.
Pink Lady's Slipper is a
food source for several insects and White-tailed
Deer.
Michael W.
Thompson
Copyright, Native Sons
Nursery
In order to spread and grow new
plants, Pink Lady's Slipper needs help from other organisms.
First, when a new seed is ready to grow, it must have a
fungus
help it. The fungus has not been identified by scientists yet, but we
know it is in the Rhizoctonia Genus. The lady's slipper seed
does not have a food supply inside it, like most seeds do. It needs
the threads of the fungus to break open the seed and attach
themselves to it. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients
to the Pink Lady's Slipper seed.
The seed will grow very slowly
into a new plant. Without the fungus helping it, the plant could not
grow. The plant will return the favor to the fungus when it is older.
The fungus can soak up nutrients from the lady's slipper that it
could not get by itself. Pink Lady's Slippers can live to be twenty
years old or more.
This wildflower also needs help
from bees. Its closed flower means that only a strong insect, like a
bumble bee can push its way inside. The flower smells sweet, so the
bee is tricked into thinking it holds nectar.
When the bee gets inside it not only finds no nectar, but it realizes
it is trapped. It cannot get back out the way it got in. The bumble
bee explores and find a new way to squeeze out of the flower. To do
so, it must push past a part of the flower called a stamen. The bee
gets out, but it also gets covered with pollen
that was on the stamen.
If the bumble bee gets tricked
again by another Pink Lady's Slipper, it will deliver pollen from the
first flower, and get covered with pollen again by the new flower.
The bee may do this several times before it figures out to avoid Pink
Lady's Slipper. The bumble bee gets nothing out of the relationship.
Without the bee's help, the plant could not make new
seeds.
Most people enjoy
seeing these beautiful flowers. Unfortunately, it also means a lot of
people try to collect them from the wild to have as their own. Since
this flower takes many years to grow, if too many people take them,
they cannot continue to survive in the wild. Also, since Pink Lady's
Slippers cannot grow without the Rhizoctonia fungus, the plants
people collect usually die anyway. Many people are trying to protect
Pink Lady's Slippers, and in most places it is now illegal to take
them out of their habitat.
