Cypripedium?

[Nik]

I think this may be a Cypripedium in the woods adjacent to our yard. Picture is from early June.
I would appreciate any thoughts.

[ian mcdonald]

Could be Nik. Do you have Listera in your area?

[Nik]

Thank you, Ian! I just checked whether Listera is found in CT, and it seems that there is Listera cordata (syn. Neottia cordata). I have never seen it. However, its leaves look quite different and much smaller in pictures I could find online. Listera ovata appears to have very similar leaves, but is not found around here. The size of the leaves in my picture is about 10 cm from base to tip. I spent considerable amount of time looking for plants with either flowers or fruit, but found none, just a couple more examples of leaves only. I was thinking it could be Cypripedium acaule because the soil in the area is very acidic (pH 3.5-4.5).

[GordonT]

Nik, I think you are right. These look like Cypripedium acaule foliage to me, and ought to have slightly pubescent leaves.

[Nik]

Yes, I remember the leaf pubescence. Thank you for the confirmation, GordonT!
Next year I will try even harder to find some with flowers. I have no intention of transplanting in our yard, but will be very interested in collecting some seeds and spreading them in different areas of our property. I think we have the right conditions, but I expect the chance of success will be quite low..

[Vinny 123]

Wikipedia has an extremely good, detailed, page for C. a. if needed.
Beautiful, and with a most unusual natural history.

[partisangardener]

A friend gave me this October some Cypripedium  acaule. They are thought to be very difficult.
To stay in the right Ph I made a special floating garden. The substrate filling is 20 cm high.
Here is the plant.

[Vinny 123]

Take a look on Wiki - pH is absolutely critical, and needs to be VERY low.

[partisangardener]

Thank you for your apprehensive and good advice.
The friend I have the plants from, approved of my setup, before he gave me the plants. He is one of the few here in Germany to keep them alive for some years and flowering too. But the way I invented, it might take a lot less maintenance if it works.

My goal is to seed-grow it there. In order to achieve this I put some mycorrhiza plants in there. Maple, willow,some Erica tetralix and some others too.
I have another island too with needle trees as an alternative for another seeding experiment. These plants will grow slow and I will prune .them regular, to keep them small. Still I have no seeds. The only seed pot he has got this year, is now in artificial culture.
Maybe next year, then I will know a lot more about the growing in my raft planter for acaule.

I used sulfuric acid to bring down the Ph to 3.
The whole setup is covered with live Sphagnum. After a rain period  Ph in the water, it is floating on, went up to 3,9. A week later Sphagnum pushed it down to 3,2. Substrate is from a acidic soil on granite. At the bottom as first layer is granite sand and gravel.
I wait for the spring
Floating gardens
https://www.srgc.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=18726.0

[Vinny 123]

I have been using a similar idea - floating gardens - to try to grow aquatic crinums, which people normally grow in aquaria, usually with fish. So far, it works well but flowers are a LONG way off I fear. - the bulbs are in 10cm clay pots in 1 litre plastic beakers with a few large stones in the bottom of the beaker to raise the bottom of the clay pot off the bottom of the beaker.

[partisangardener]

 I don't get the floating part, but I am not a native speaker.
Please excuse my not understanding the similarities.

To the problem Nik approaches with seeding these Cypripedium in his garden. He might have a optimum chance with  my floating garden system.
If he uses substrate from the Forrest on a floating raft his chances are much better than normal. I would add mycorrhizal plants like young trees or from the Erica family which grow near the natural stands I think he will succeed. The optimum water supply and oxygen in his substrate on the raft will help him much.
https://www.srgc.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=18726.msg424716;topicseen#new

With my Cypripedium  reginae it worked already (a relative easy species) and i had no soil from a Cypripedium habitat.

[Vinny 123]

I don't get the floating part, but I am not a native speaker.
Please excuse my not understanding the similarities.

It doessn't matter too much whether the planting part floats or sinks - the idea is really a growing medium sitting inside a flooded tank of some kind.

Around 25 years ago, a friend had a VERY impressive growth of sundews (and pinguicula??? utricularia? (It ws a long time ago)) and moss in a very old glass tank. The tank was cast or blown as one piece, no frame. In the centre were some rocks and over them grew huge numbers of sundews. He just added distilled water to keep it wet. Broadly similar sort of idea as I understand your floating garden.

[partisangardener]

The advantage of floating substrate is, that there is always a very thin layer of water there, which is always saturated with oxygen and anaerobic microorganism have no chance.
It is not the water supply alone. Excess water flows always into the main water body without much organic material.
Your setup has varying oxygen levels, which I try to avoid without much maintenance.
The quite excessive water body will keep for month without intervention or rain and if it rains no water will suffocate the substrate.

[Vinny 123]

My own plants are indoors - tropical/sub-tropical crinums, so rain is not going to happen. Just as in a peat bog, water-level rises and falls through the seasons, in an aquatic habitat, the water level also rises and falls and crinums grow in many positions but always shallow water
I do not know enough microbiology to know whether aerobic/abaerobic bugs are neccessarily desirable, or not. Peat bog "soils" are mostly anaerobic - that is one reason why things do not rot in peat bogs.

[partisangardener]

A natural peat bog is very different from a artificial one.
The artificial ones have a different structure since all the consisting plants grew there in a natural one. So you have very often a rotting process in the depth with the artificial ones.
Just dig in a deeper artificial one and you will probably find a fowl smelling area. There are very special plants which can grow into this area. Peat bog plants avoid this zone. So most of the material in an artificial peat bog is wasted. With abundant water reservoirs this can be bettered. The main problem is maybe the nitrogen from the air. In a natural bog the moss layer takes a lot and converts it into plant mass. So the flow is very slowly from top down. Through the not rotting dead plants is maybe some water still rising and so the aerated part of the bog is greater. In some thriving bogs, I know, there is a flow in seeps or even little streams which run through the living parts of the bog.
'This might be the problem with many bog troughs.

In a natural bog the plants thrive mostly in the aerated upper parts. Plants with more roots grow on mounds. In my system I have only the living part of a bog.

I do not know if Crinum is capable to bring oxygen into its roots. Plants which can do this, grow well into this "dead" zone and thrive there. The plants I want to grow do certainly not.
If you look there https://www.srgc.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=18726.msg424722;topicseen#new
you might see what Cypripedium does under such conditions. With your setup for your Crinum I doubt it would work with Cypripedium.
For the Crinum yours might be perfect.
Bog plants which grow on the stagnant parts like Drosera intermedia thrive there because the competing plants with a lot of root system cant grow there.
In my system these Drosera need a very thin layer of substrate to be not very soon overgrown by other plants. It is only mm to none at all with me or I have to move them every year or two.

The peaty parts have in situ all the micro plant tubes intact and in place, until the sheer weight destroys them in the depth, or a passing by boar does the job. That is why it is so diverse there.