By Steve Roark
Volunteer, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

It’s time to be on the lookout for Pink Lady’s-slippers, which normally bloom from late April to mid-May. They are one of the most striking flowers of the woods, but for all its beauty, has a bit of a sinister side, especially if you’re a Bumblebee.
Pink Lady’s-slipper, also called Moccasin Flower, does indeed look like a roundish shoe with its large, pink, bowl shaped flower, making it hard to miss on a hike in the woods. The flower has a slit opening in the front for pollinators to access, and always has two large, twin-like leaves with deep, parallel veins growing at the base of the plant. It prefers to grow in dry woods under a mix of oak and pine trees. Pink Lady’s-slipper is in the orchid family and is one of two shoe-like wildflowers, the other being Yellow Lady’s-Slipper, which prefers moist sites found in hollows and near streams.
For all its beauty, the Pink Lady’s-slipper has a dishonest side when dealing with its main pollinator, the Bumblebee. The usual deal is that a flower attracts a pollinator to visit it by offering nectar, an important food that has an attractive smell. While the Lady’s-slipper does gives off a sweet scent, it produces no nectar as a reward for visiting the flower, but the unfortunate bee doesn’t know it’s been played until it crawls inside the large pouch through the narrow slit on the front of the flower. The insect’s frustration is no doubt doubled when it discovers that the entrance slit is a one-way door and it must now exit out an opening in the top of the flower, forcing it in contact with the pollen producing male anthers and pollen receiving female stigma to better assure that pollination takes place from flower to flower. A shady lady, but it gets the job done.
Pink Lady’s-slipper has some history as a medicinal, having been used as a sedative and to treat hysteria and insomnia. It is beautiful enough that it is often dug up for transplant into flower gardens, but this is rarely successful, as the plant must interact with certain fungi in the soil to survive. On state plant lists Lady’s-slipper is classified as uncommon and “commercially exploited”, meaning it is dug up and sold, and its population is in decline.