They *Kinda* Look Like Slippers...

The Cypripedium acaule sort of looks like a slipper. Mostly, they're beautiful and weird and rare. They're only in town for a brief visit, not going to spoil like guests or fish.

Ours are a sizeable colony of plants - we don't farm them exactly, but apparently there's a fungus, Rhizoctonia, that does. Yes, you read that right, they're farmed by a fungus in the ground, who feeds the baby orchid seeds.

Only a few of them bloom each season. They're long-lived plants, though, so maybe fifty years from now there will be a whole big bloom of them. Bees get stuck in the pouch of this flower, where there's nothing for them, but they shouldn't have been nosing around in a lady's slipper anyway.