This Siberian C.
macranthos was grown from seed obtained from the Lake Baikal region.
The seedling was planted in a pot in the spring of 1994 and is shown here
flowering for the first time four years later.
Here is our first
C.
acaule seedling to bloom. It was planted in a mix of perlite and chopped
sphagnum peat and required six years to flower. Six years to flowering
is probably inordinately long, for we know a grower in Vermont who has
had a seedling bloom two years after planting-out. The ruler is six inches
long.
Gee... I wonder
how long it will take the C. acaule seedling in the previous photo
to reach this size?! This is a spectacularly vigorous plant grown in cultivation
in a Minnesota wild garden.
C. Xandrewsii
is a natural hybrid between C. candidum and C. parviflorum
var. makasin. The photo shows a cultivated plant in Minnesota.
The
C. californicum
seedling shown here is four years out of the flask. The plant also
bloomed the previous year. In our experience, C. californicum
seedlings commonly flower at three years when planted in a mix of perlite
and Turface and fertilized with every watering.
This
C. fasciculatum
seedling also flowered for the first time five years after removal from
the flask, but at least it produced two flowers. Under good conditions,
wild plants of the clustered lady's-slipper carry up to four flowers on
a stem. The pot is eight inches in diameter.
C.
tibeticum is a very large-flowered Chinese species. There are two quite
different forms of this species, the pink-flowered plant shown here and
a dark-colored form with a yellow base color and dark purple, sometimes
nearly black, corrugated lip.
The
cool-growing C. yatabeanum is native both to Alaska and Asia. The
plant shown in this photo is of Japanese provenance.