cypripedium

The Ladys Slipper: Cypripedium The ladys Slipper, or Cypripedium, is an easily recognizable species from the Orchidaceae family. Plant Description The family is commonly known to have fantastic flowers, with flamboyant color and display. Members of this family are normally found to grow in bogs, meadowlands, and woodlands. The flowers all share some common characteristics, such as, possessing three sepals and petals, with markedly bilateral symmetry. The lowest petal, or lip, usually differs from the other two, either in shape, size, or color, possibly all three. Secondly, the center of the flower is recognized by what is known as a column, which consists of the formed style, stigma, and up to three stamens all joined together. The ovary, which is inferior and embedded in the end of the stem helps to support the rest of the flower. Another characteristic of the Orchidaceae family is the twisting that they do during development. This causes what started out as the lowest petal to become the uppermost. This condition is now referred to botanists as resupinate (Rickett 94). There are several species found within the genus, Cypripedium, but all share the characteristic inflated, slipper-shaped lip, from which the common name originates (Walcott 20). The genus not only gets its name from the large lip of the flower, but botanically from the reference to the slipper or the sandal (pedilum) of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, who was born on the island of Cyprus (Rickett 96). The ladys slipper differs from other members of the Orchidaceae family due to the two pollen-bearing stamens, which sit on either side of the column near the opening of the slipper. The lip has a large opening on the upper surface, which is enclosed by the curved margins of the lip. The two stamens block the lip opening at the base of the plant, and leave only two very small openings on each side of the column at the base (House 64). There i...