Losing the Minnesota State flower

When the garden zones changed this past January, they fore-shadowed trouble for the Minnesota State flower, the showy pink and white ladyslipper (Cypripedium reginae).

Found living in open fens, bogs, swamps, and damp woods where there is plenty of light, ladyslippers grow slowly, taking up to 16 years to produce their first flowers. Extremes of temperature are detrimental to seedlings of most Cypripedium species. That means that 70 degrees in March this year followed by 15 degrees a week later is too extreme for these fragile plants.

As zone 5 creeps northward from global warming, the needed cool spring temperatures to get this flower to maturity are disappearing. Soon pink and white ladysplippers will only be found in the wildin Canada.