Cypripedium kentuckiense

Common names:  Kentucky Lady’s Slipper, Southern Lady’s Slipper

Range:  Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma. 

Blooming season (in Kentucky):  Late May

Habitat:  In the wild, the Kentucky Lady’s Slipper grows in the floodplains of streams and rivers.  The plants are periodically inundated.  If this occurs while the flowers are open, the plants are unable to pollinate, and set no seed that year.  Despite the southern distribution, this habitat always stays cool and somewhat moist, and the plants will not tolerate hot and dry conditions.  In Kentucky, the plant is often associated with azaleas, mountain laurels and bellworts under the dappled shade of birch trees.  The substrate is alluvial sand with a little clay, silt and humus. 

Comments:  This is the largest flowered Cypripedium species.  The pouch (lip) of the flower is the size of a chicken egg.  Amazingly for its size and distribution, the plant was not discovered until Mr. James Daulton found it blooming during a fishing trip in northern Kentucky in late May of 1951. 

According to James Daulton, all of the plants he has found in the wild had only one stem with a single flower, except for one plant that had two stems.  However, the plant growing in Daulton’s yard has grown into an amazing clump and produced 41 flowers in 2003.