LADY SLIPPER FLOWER

I live in the state of Minnesota. I was born and raised here and will most likely live out the rest of my life here. We have many extremes in our weather patterns. We get as cold as 45 degrees below zero in the winter and as high as 110 degrees in the summer with a great deal of humidity. The unpredictable weather is part of the reason I love this state. The weather adds a feeling of adventure to life here. The population of the state is growing rapidly. This means that the large expanses of woods and farm lands are being developed for housing. Urban sprawl has claimed a great deal of property. As a result the state flower the lady slipper flower is becoming extinct.

The northern third of the state had been an area of wilderness until recently. This area has the vast majority of the 10,000 lakes that we are famous for. What had been wilderness and wooded areas are now populated with lake homes and cabin getaways for people that live in the cities during the week and spend the weekends “up north”. This expansion is destroying the habitat for the lady slipper flower. This is a delicate beautiful white and pink flower that grows in shaded heavily wooded areas. My father talks about seeing hundreds of them spread across the ground when he was a boy. Now there are very few people that will ever see a lady slipper flower in the wild.

The flower needs to reseed itself in order to come up again the next year. So many people used to pick the unusual lady slipper flower. Once the flower is picked it will not come back again the next year. There are now steep fines for picking, digging or in anyway harming this flower. Because it is the state flower people are intrigued with wanting to find one. Many times the very act of looking for one may destroy the small plants as they try to grow. Some of the state parks will fence off an area where the plants are growing so that people can see them and take pictures without damaging the plant.

To me it would make since to choose a flower that is more prevalent across a greater portion of the state to be the state flower. If we would have a different state flower maybe the stress on the lady slipper flower would decrease because people would not be obsessed with finding one.