We are privileged to be able to publish a recent and rare photo of Cypripedium calceolus – known in English as Lady’s Slipper. Elisabetta Massardo, a Companion of the Clarence Bicknell Association, writes…
“You may remember that in June 2019 Graham Avery wrote a paper on Clarence Bicknell and Cypripedium calceolus. Well I had never seen this orchid before few days ago. During a trek in the Provence Alps I found it and I’m sending you this jewel. If this can be of help for your activity you are free to use it.” Thank you Elisabetta. We will be putting together a gallery of your botanical photography in the near future.
Cypripedium comes from the Greek Κύπρις πεδίον (Kypris pedion), meaning Aphrodite’s foot (a reference to the goddess Aphrodite, equivalent to the Roman Venus). Calceolus is Latin for a small shoe. This is the largest-flowered orchid species in Europe, growing to 60 cm tall with flowers as wide as 9 cm. Before it flowers, it is distinguished from other orchids by the large size and width of its ovate leaves (as big as 18 cm long, 9 cm wide), which like other orchids exhibit parallel venation. Each shoot has up to four leaves and a small number of flowers (typically one or two), which have long often twisted petals varying from red-brown to black (rarely green) and a slipper-shaped yellow labellum, within which red dots are visible. It is a long-lived perennial and spreads using horizontal stems (rhizomes).
Read Graham’s paper Clarence Bicknell and Cypripedium calceolus at the following web link…
https://clarencebicknell.com/wp-content/uploads/clarence_bicknell_cypripedium_calceolus_graham_avery.pdf
“The British botanist Clarence Bicknell (1842-1918) often visited the Valle di Pesio, 120 km north of his home in Bordighera, to botanise and to escape from the summer heat, and it was there that he found Cypripedium calceolus for the first time in 1899.”
Members of our Association can get a high resolution copy of this image; please email us at info@clarencebicknell.com