Venus's Slipper

Description:

Also known as Calypso Orchid. Spotten near Grassi Lakes, in the Rocky Mountains of Kananaskis Provincial Park, Alberta.

Habitat:

Its favourite habitat is in pine woods where it grows in the damp litter of the forest floor. It flowers early in the summer, when the showy blossoms are much in evidence, only to vanish when the solitary leaf- and flowering-stem shrivels and disintegrates, leaving only the fleshy corm shallowly buried in the forest floor. Nearly circumboreal, but not alpine, ascending only to the upper limit of lodgepole pine.