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If there is a signature plant for our garden, it is the large yellow lady's slipper orchid, Cypripedium parviflorum var. pubescens. Over the years, and through a couple of gardens, it has been steadily multiplying, so that we now have about 35 stalks. Planted shallowly in loose, duffy soil, it has been carefree and beautiful.
About forty years ago I was in medical school here in Iowa City, and used to wander the beautiful woods and fields looking at birds and flowers. Once, and once only, when I was walking down a cool, damp ravine I came across a yellow lady's slipper in full bloom. After graduating from medical school, heading first to San Francisco, then back to Iowa to a city eighty miles north of here, I now find myself retired back where it all started, in Iowa City. From time to time I think about that yellow lady's slipper I saw many years ago, but I've never been able to find the spot again. I know there was what seemed to be a small radio station at the edge of the woods, but I've described this to many old-timers and never gotten an answer. Likely the woods is gone and it's now a housing addition, but I like to think that yellow lady's slipper is still blooming there, hidden in a damp ravine, like a small unicorn; I can see it still in my mind's eye, and when I wander our garden's pathways, and marvel at the healthy clumps of cypripediums now blooming, I wish the yellow lady's slipper in the woods well.
05-28-2008, 02:34 PM
