This first full week of May was National Wildflower Week, and I got to celebrate by planting some North American native orchids!
This country's orchids are among the hardest to grow, and because many of them are protected, they are also quite hard to obtain. Fortunately, several labs have endeavored to learn the tricks of lab propagation of seeds, and so I was able to obtain about 30 sustainably grown seedlings.
The title photo is representative of what I received. After the parent plant is pollenated, the seed capsule matures for at least a half a year. Just before it bursts and releases its seeds, it is harvested and allowed to dry. A single capsule generates many tiny seeds. Orchids do not give their seeds the energy (sugars) they need to grow, so they rely on a symbiotic relationship between the seeds and various fungi that grow where the seeds land. This dependence is what has made orchid cultivation so difficult for so many years. Experimentation has now resulted in reliable seed germination for many species; the North American lady slippers of the genus Cypripedium are among the more recent successes. Seeds are processed and placed in a nutrient gel for up to a year to germinate, and then grown through their first season in the gel before being extracted and cleaned. Because they are plants of temperate to cold climates, they go dormant over the winter. (My supplier refrigerates their seedlings to simulate this gently over their first winter - a process called "vernalization".) As Spring approaches, they take the seedlings out of the fridge and allow them to sprout before shipping them off to customers like me.
I chose two species for my first attempt: The Yellow Lady Slipper, Cyp. parviflorum var. pubescens, is native to my Colorado mountain home, so I ordered a bunch; as you can see from the label, their ancestral plants came from Minnesota. The Alaskan or Spotted Lady Slipper, Cyp. guttatum, is a cold summer orchid that cannot tolerate extended heat (a few days of a few hours above 80°F maximum); fortunately, I live at 9500 feet altitude, so I rarely see 80°F days and yet my winters are only Zone 5a (-20°F minimum). The ancestor to these plants was collected in Irkutsk, Siberia; the species is found from Belarus to northwest Canada.
Each seedling is mostly buried in a sand and bark compost mix and given a bit of fertilizer; they require a pretty large growing area because their yearly growth is via a spreading rhizome (like a strawberry plant). Still, mine are in oversized pots rather than a flower bed — I'm growing them indoors in my basement under grow lights for now because I'm still getting overnight freezes.
This year I expect these plants will put up one or two leaves and reach a height of about three inches. They will mature over three to five years and eventually reach perhaps a foot in height, with broad green rippled leaves. Each year the current growth will die off and spread via one or more new rhisomes, which need a few months of near-freezing temperatures to rest. Eventually they will flower into some of the most spectacular wildflowers in the country!
And I will be able to help preserve these species and add to my yard's native orchid collection. (I already host naturally occurring Spotted Coralroot and Calypso orchids, and I suspect based on those that I may be missing a couple of others.)