California Lady's Slipper

Cypripedium californicum is one of our rarer native orchids and does not grow in Washington State, but only in a very limited area of southern Oregon and northern California. It is also one of the most interesting of the native Lady's Slippers, first because it grows only in serpentine areas (serpentine is a green and black rock rich in heavy metals like nickel and cadmium), and second, because it can bear as many as twenty flowers on a flower spike. The plant grows to about four feet tall and the individual flowers are around two inches in size. They are often found growing with a carnivorous plant, the Cobra Lily, Darlingtonia californica, and are usually in wet seepage areas, just where we found them along a Forest Service road near the California-Oregon border. They do not all have the pink color around the opening of the pouch. and the flower color varies from the bronze-green color of these flowers to a yellowish-green.

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