Remember that television cliché, “Don’t try this at home?” To the average gardener, it probably conjures images of some death-defying stunt, but what springs to my mind is images of an attempt to relocate some lovely pink lady’s slippers in my yard.
Good fortune arrived one spring, when this healthy plant set up shop in a quiet corner of the garden.
Photo Credit: © Pennystone Gardens
Cypripedium acaule is an orchid that’s native to acidic bogs and dry uplands in the Appalachian Mountains, as well as in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and boreal forests in much of Canada.
Photo Credit: © Pennystone Gardens
Known variously as pink lady’s slipper or moccasin flower, a colony of Cypripedium acaule led to our interest in landscaping with native plants.
Photo Credit: © Pennystone Gardens
Relocating any native plant from its perfect home in the wild to your more than likely imperfect garden can kill them off (not to mention bite you with a hefty fine if you move a plant without proper permission). And few plants serve as better evidence of this than pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule). One of the many orchids that grow wild in American woodlands, this beauty has the reputation of being among the fussiest of its kind.
While you can buy the lovely yellow lady’s slipper (C. parviflorum) from many vendors, and you can find the increasingly rare showy lady’s slipper (C. reginae) here and there, you’re not likely to find C. acaule anywhere but out in nature, because it’s such a challenge to grow. It’s one of those species that tempts even the most responsible native plant enthusiast to try relocating one. But pink lady’s slipper is extremely specific about its habitat. And even if you can harvest its seed (which may or may not germinate), it can take many years for the resultant plant to produce the strange flower so attractive to admirers.
This plant is so uncommon, when a friend noticed a flock of them in our yard, he counseled us not to say much about it because of the potential for poaching! Twenty years later, we haven’t noticed people sneaking in to dig them up…just the grazing deer.
Eventually we decided to fence our garden to prevent the four-legged invaders from eating everything. Our patches of C. acaule remained where they had managed to grow quite nicely for years: outside the fence. We still celebrate the return of one slipper that took up residence inside the fence, and we were ecstatic when a second one appeared nearby (a rare fortune)!
Unfortunately, increasing deer pressure began to cause a decline in the numerous pink lady’s slippers on the other side of the fence. The beauties would barely be in leaf when they’d abruptly vanish. Finally we fenced off the last remaining stand, but that still left a number of isolated plants unprotected. So we decided to organize a rescue. We spoke with several experts on C. acaule, all of whom provided useful information and the inevitable warning: Don’t try this at home.
We took their advice to heart but still went ahead with our decision to rescue the pink lady’s slippers that were certainly doomed. Having first set up a new bed with a soil mix so unusual that it damaged nearby azaleas, we waited for marked plants to appear. Then we saturated the soils and proceeded to gently carve out huge pies of soil about 24 inches in diameter and 6 inches deep. The real struggle was working through the sandy clay packed with broken shale and not touching any of the plants’ delicate roots, which run like threads over distances. (We had been cautioned that injuring the root tips would likely prove a death sentence.)
Once the soil pies were loose, we quickly whisked the complete hunks of habitat to their new site, just 50-60 feet away in the same light conditions. In all, we moved seven plants in the course of a long day. We marked them all and watched closely for the rest of the season. None bloomed, but all appeared healthy and eventually retreated into winter dormancy.
This year the watch for pink lady’s slippers began early. Our naturally occurring plants showed up first, then one by one tiny green spikes appeared in the new bed…all except for one plant, which had crumbled en route to its new location. We didn’t pat ourselves on the back for our gardening skill – six out of seven survivors was sheer luck! Ours was more a sigh of relief than smug cheer. Our pink lady’s slippers had just come out of dormancy when moved, were out of the ground for only a few minutes and traveled only a short distance – and they survived. I have no inclination to do it again, and I hope our little bed of them manages itself okay.
Pink lady’s slipper, like other challenging species, is a plant you either have or you don’t due to specific conditions. Part of the challenge of landscaping with natives is to replicate the habitat for the many easy-to-grow species available from nurseries, and one of the requirements for success is to transplant when a plant is dormant. So when you have permission to dig a plant from the wild, you have to be really good at identifying that plant when its not in full growth and blooming – not to mention be certain that you’ve harvested enough of the root system to permit the plant to survive.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t visit all the native beauties in our great parks, preserves and conservation areas. Admire the plants and study the ecosystems: the companion plants, geology of the site, the macro-environment. Re-create as much of it as you can in your garden, and then visit a nursery or native plant sale where selections are varied and probabilities of success are high. And you never can tell…if the habitat is right, a lady’s slipper seed just might blow in to surprise – and reward – you!
