Pink lady slipper orchid: why you can't buy one or dig one up

You'll see them listed for sale. Here's why to skip them:

• They're rarely propagated. UNH Extension says pink lady slippers are seldom grown commercially, so any plant you see for sale was almost certainly collected from the wild, and cheap ones most of all.
• Growing them from seed is slow. The seeds don't sprout easily, and UNH says a plant can take a decade or more to bloom for the first time. At Longwood Gardens, botanists who hand-pollinated wild plants needed about 18 months in their lab, then at least a year in the nursery, before seedlings were ready to plant out.
• They're picky about soil. Longwood calls it common in the wild but rare in gardens, because it needs strongly acidic soil (pH below 4.5) with little competition from other plants. NC State Extension puts the line at pH below 6.0. Either way, that's far more acidic than most garden beds.
• Collecting has hurt lady slippers before. The USDA Forest Service says collecting for their beauty and for the medicinal trade, failed transplants and lost habitat have sharply cut wild lady slipper numbers.

Want a slipper orchid for a windowsill? That's a different plant: the Asian slipper orchid on our Paphiopedilum card, sold nursery-raised. Our types guide explains how the names overlap.

Most orchids have this kind of partnership, called mycorrhiza. The pink lady slipper leans on it hard:

• Seeds with no lunch packed. UNH Extension explains that the seeds have no stored food, so the fungus has to break the seed open and feed the embryo. Longwood Gardens adds that the fungus keeps feeding the seedling until it can make its own food from light.
• A partner for life. NC State says the seeds need a specific Rhizoctonia fungus to sprout, and the relationship turns two-way as the plant matures. Maine Extension says the fungus supplies the plant with nutrients.
• Why moving it fails. Lift the plant and you tear it away from that underground network. Put it somewhere the fungus isn't, and the plant slowly starves.

Think of me as a roommate who can't cook: I brought the flowers, the fungus brings dinner. Take me out of the house and I'm in trouble.

• Leaves: just two, at the base, with parallel veins, about 9 to 30 cm (3.5 to 12 in) long, per the North American Orchid Conservation Center. The flower stalk itself has no leaves (NC State, Forest Service).
• Flower: one per stalk, rarely two. The pouch is about 3 to 7 cm (1.2 to 2.6 in) long, usually pink with darker veins, sometimes deep magenta and, rarely, white (Maine Extension, the Conservation Center). Unlike the round opening of other lady slippers, it has a slit down the front, the Forest Service notes. The narrow petals and sepals above it are greenish to purplish brown.
• When: April to June in North Carolina (NC State), late May to mid July in New England (Maine Extension), late May and June on Prince Edward Island (Government of Canada).
• Where it grows: acidic woods and woodlands, often under pines, other conifers or oaks, on mossy slopes or in deep leaf litter (NC State, Forest Service).

Kew's World Checklist of Vascular Plants lists it as native to:

• Eastern Canada: New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec.
• Western and northern Canada: Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories.
• North-central United States: Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
• Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and West Virginia.
• Southeastern United States: Alabama, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

How common it is depends on where you are. The North American Orchid Conservation Center calls it globally secure and common across much of its range, yet Illinois and Indiana list it as endangered, and Alberta, Alabama and Manitoba as a species of concern. Maine lists it as a species of "special concern" (Maine Extension).

• Prince Edward Island. The PEI government says the lady's slipper (Cypripedium acaule) became the official provincial flower on April 25, 1947. The Government of Canada adds that a 1965 amendment to the province's Floral Emblems Act wrote in that exact botanical name. Why 1965? The Canadian Encyclopedia says the province first chose the showy lady's slipper and swapped it for the pink one in 1965 because the showy kind is rare. The Missouri Department of Conservation tells the same story: PEI picked the showy lady's slipper first, then had to choose another orchid because of its rarity. Two lady slipper flowers also appear at the foot of the province's coat of arms, the Government of Canada notes.
• New Hampshire. A 1991 state law names the pink lady's slipper the official state wildflower of New Hampshire (RSA 3:17), and UNH Extension gives the same year.

Its showy cousin has its own title: the Minnesota Legislature's Legislative Reference Library says the pink and white showy lady's slipper (Cypripedium reginae) became Minnesota's state flower in law in 1967.

The Forest Service counts about 50 lady slipper (Cypripedium) species across Europe, Asia and North America, a dozen of them in the US. Its name comes from Cypris, a name for the goddess Aphrodite, and the Greek word for sandal, after the pouch-shaped lip. Two of the pink lady slipper's closest neighbors:

• Showy lady's slipper (Cypripedium reginae). White petals over a pink-streaked pouch. Kew gives it a range much like the pink lady slipper's: central and eastern Canada to the north-central and eastern US.
• Yellow lady's slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum). A yellow pouch. Kew's range for it is the widest of the three, from Alaska and the Yukon across Canada and most of the United States.

If you want one of these in a garden, UNH Extension points to the showy and the greater yellow lady's slipper (C. parviflorum var. pubescens) as better choices than the pink, while warning that both are still hard to grow. Buy only plants a seller can show were raised from seed, as our rare orchids guide explains.