Habitat & Endangerment

The pink lady’s slipper is the state wild flower of New Hampshire. Unlike the other three slippers, the pink lady’s slipper does not mind New Hampshire’s acidic soils. It is very common in the state. The pink lady’s slipper prefers shade and is often found on the sides of trails.  Some people think this is because deer eat the seed pods and distribute them along the trails when they poop.

The pink lady slipper also proliferates a few years after logging or blow-downs in a spruce/pine forest when the logs begin rotting and a white fungal mycelium is thriving.

Flowering Plant

Plants are categorized by their flower structures. The pink lady’s slipper has the same basic structure as the showy lady’s slipper but the sepals and petals are different colors and slightly different shapes. The bold fuchsia pouch is a petal evolved to trap insects and help pollination. The vertical large sepal is two sepals that are fused, so is the third sepal behind the pouch. Unlike its cousins in the Cypripedium genus, the pink slipper has no stem…just a lonely peduncle. It grows up to almost two feet tall. 

Here is a closer look of the flower structure. From the top left we have the ovary and the male anthers that has a mass of brown sticky pollen. The female stigma hides behind the staminode and is invisible in this picture. The beautiful pink pouch looks like a pair of ballet slippers.

The pink lady’s slippers are covered with hairs that can irritate skin.