Yellow and Purple Lady Slippers

Yellow and Purple Lady Slippers (Cypripedium calceolus)

A rare wild orchid once found across Europe, Yellow and Purple Lady Slippers are now growing in Britain, but in only one odd location: a golf course.  It has been under strict police protection since 1917 in order to preserve it from people (and golf balls of course).  A single cutting can be sold for $5,000 US, which is unheard of considering how the plant is very difficult to propagate.

Another rare Lady Slipper flower (Cypripedium reginae) is just as difficult to propagate; even Charles Darwin failed to successfully cultivate it.  The seeds of the flower provide no nourishment for the growing plant and so it lives in a symbiotic relationship with a specific type of fungus that nourishes it.  Once the plant has reached maturity, the fungus lives off the adult plant.  The flower has dark purple to almost red-brown tendrils and bright-yellow “slipper or moccasin” shaped flowers. For being so rare, so temperamental, and so fungus-friendly, the Yellow and Purple Lady Slippers dance in at number 3