Posts Tagged ‘Pink Lady’s Slipper’
pink lady’s slipper
This time of year, my husband does an inventory of the Pink Lady’s Slippers (Cypripedium acaule) on our property.
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This year, he found 10. He only saw three last year but there have been as many as 15 in bloom at one time. We never pick them and try to keep our property natural and wooded.
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The Pink Lady’s Slipper prefers acidic soil and partly shady conditions, making our grey woods an ideal habitat. Our flowers are often a pale pink or white variety.
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
blue in the woodland
About a decade ago, we took a drive from Canterbury to McAdam on a gravel road. The memory I have carried with me for years is of a section of woodland absolutely blue with flowers. I often wondered what the flowers were and if I’d be able to find the spot again. This weekend we tried to find the place and the sea of blue in the woodland.
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Highway 630 from Canterbury to McAdam in New Brunswick (map from Google Maps)
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Canterbury, like many rural communities of New Brunswick, has faced a shrinking population over the years. Settled by Loyalists, it was a center for logging and railroad traffic and, in the late 1800s, had a population of over 1000. Today it has only about 340 residents. Nevertheless, it is a charming village and has a newly renovated school, housing all 12 grades.
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Village of Canterbury at the turn to Highway 630
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The route from Canterbury toward the south is a numbered road. But Highway 630 is not paved and quite rutted in some sections. In one place we had to ask some ATVers if we were on the right road!
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Highway 630
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As we drove, I watched the woods for those blue flowers. Wildflowers were certainly a theme of our drive. By the road we saw Pink Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), Bluebead Lily (Clintonia borealis), Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) and Quaker Ladies (Houstonia caerulea).
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Lady’s Slipper and Bunchberry along the road
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The map shows a community named Carroll’s Ridge just south of Canterbury. When we reached the location marked on the map, there were no homes or buildings, only a few old roads and cleared areas. But there in the woods was evidence people had once lived there. I found my sea of blue! Forget-me-nots, escaped from some forgotten garden to thrive in the near by woods.
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Forget-me-nots escaped from an old garden
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In my memory, the ‘blue’ of the flowers was more intense a decade ago. But we noticed many of the Forget-me-nots there now are a white variety. Who knows if flower colour or memory really changed during those ten years.
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blue flowers in the woodland
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Forget-me-nots in the woods
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I picked a few of the Forget-me-nots, to try an ‘eco-print’ dyeing experiment in coming days. But what I really took away was another image of a sea of blue flowers in the woods.
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
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