Lincoln is blessed with so many wonderful wildflowers that it is almost fortunate that our showiest local orchid, the pink lady’s slipper, is rare enough not to outshine the rest. By another of its monikers, it became the eponym for Moccasin Hill, one of Modernist neighborhood Brown’s Wood’s crossing ways. (The other is Laurel Drive, for another spectacular native, Kalmia latifolia.)
The lady’s slipper is noted for its particularity of habitat, requiring a mycorrhizal helper to germinate (and to survive when dormant), very acidic soil and just the right amount of light to thrive. It is also sparing of its graces; while plants may survive for a century or more, they only leaf in favorable years and flower not always then. Difficult to propagate by usual methods, expensive in the trade, it is occasionally poached from the wild—like this example of which Harold says: “Someone has stolen this lady’s slipper from along the Farrar Pond trail. The first to appear, it has bloomed at the same spot for over 20 years. Now it is gone forever. Shame on the perpetrator!”
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And doubly sad, the fragility of root structures means that few pilfered plants will survive captivity anyway. This selfish act, stealing delight from people and food from a number of other animals, is also illegal:
No person shall pull up or dig up the plant of a wild azalea, wild orchid or cardinal flower (lobelia cardinalis), or any part thereof, or injure any such plant or any part thereof except in so far as is reasonably necessary in procuring the flower therefrom, within the limits of any state highway or any other public way or place, or upon the land of another person without written authority from him, and no person shall buy or sell, or offer or expose for sale, any such flower, or the whole or any part of the plant thereof, knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, that in procuring such flower or plant the foregoing provisions have been violated. Violation of any provision of this section shall be punished by a fine of not more than five dollars.
Though now risible, the size of the fine is consonant with the seniority of this law (1935), and the relatively early awareness that private depredations on public land were degrading natural beauty belonging to all. Please leave these too-rare gems to live, grow and spread!
-Ed.
A good year!
Each year, volunteers intimately familiar with the pond’s public southern shoreline make a careful census of Cypripedium acaule:
| Shoreline segment | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | |
| 1-2 | Boathouse ↔ Flying Squirrel Hollow | 38 | 23 | 24 | 33 | 56 | 51 | 71 |
| 2-3 | Flying Squirrel Hollow ↔ Pine Point | 17 | 7 | 6 | 15 | 32 | 24 | 32 |
| 3-4 | Pine Point ↔ Sweet Pepper Bush | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
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| 4-5 | Sweet Pepper Bush ↔ Perch Point | 17 | 10 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 4 |
| 5-6 | Perch Point ↔ Canoes | 27 | 22 | 25 | 11 | 33 | 10 | 37 |
| 5-7 | Canoes ↔ Birch Point | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 7-8 | Birch Point ↔ Well | 47 | 27 | 33 | 44 | 43 | 32 | 41 |
| 8-9 | Well ↔ Dam | 3 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 2 |
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| Total | 152 | 92 | 99 | 114 | 179 | 123 | 194 | |
(More information on points of interest in this post.)
