Lady's Slipper

cypripedium, or Moccasin Flower, a beautiful flowering plant of the orchid family, remarkable for an inflated lower lip. Lady's slippers are found wild in Europe, Asia, and both Americas, but not in Africa or Australia. There are six wild species in the United States northeast of a line from Minnesota to east Kansas, and thence to North Carolina. The smallest is the one-flowered, white kind, with a lip an inch in length on a stalk a hand's breadth in height. The largest is the showy lady's slipper--a royal flower with a pink, purple-spotted lip, two and one-half inches in length. Botanists recognize fifteen world species. The lady's slipper has been adopted as the state flower of Minnesota. The lady's slipper is the rarest of British wild flowers. A single species, a delicate, white, fragrant slipper, still lingers in a remote nook of Yorkshire. The few who know refuse to make its haunt public. See Orchid