Cypripedium

Here is a variety of Lady's Slipper Orchid growing happily in a garden in Arnside. People think they are hard to grow but in the right site they are happy to be neglected.This one is on a north facing bank in some shade growing in thin soil on limestone. It is a hybrid however which probably gives it more vigour.

Of course Gait Barrows National Nature Reserve is one of the key sites for the attempt to reintroduce the native English Lady's Slipper orchid Cypripedium calceolus which has been under way for a decade or more and is organised by Kew Botanical Gardens who developed a way growing them from seed. Several hundred have now been planted out in the wild and are flowering well. In the last week in May and the first week in June it is possible to see about 70 plants in flower at Gait Barrows. There are sign posts and the public is invited to the display.

Before this reintroduction programme there was one plant in Silverdale which had been flowering for several decades but it was not the native English variety. The only genuine English wild plant was in Grass Woods near Grassington. There were a few others kept alive in private estates.

Real success will come when they spread without human intervention. Keep your fingers crossed.,