Consider-the-Lilies Web Gallery
Pink Lady's Slipper
When I go out rambling in the the fields and woods around my home in Virginia, most often I am doing just that: rambling. Just to wander in the fields does my soul enormous good. A couple of hours hiking, seeing what is to be seen in His creation on that day draws me ever closer to its Creator.
But, although, ordinarily, I have no set objective beyond just hiking along a trail, I have over time developed a feeling, an air of expectation, as I start my ramble.
This sense that something "new" is to be seen has become a part of my outings, because almost every time I go out some new lily is brought to my attention.
Suddenly, just about every time there it is, waiting to be appreciated—seen so I might give it due consideration, as it were—, and with a thankful heart I take its picture and we have some more beauty in the Gallery.
Sometimes I come across a wildflower that is at the end of its short life, as is the way for "lilies of the field," isn't it?
Thanks to the wonders of the Global Positioning System (GPS), though, this is not the end of the story. By pushing the appropriate buttons on my GPS unit I can do an electronic "X marks the spot." Then next year, Lord willing, I plan a return early enough in its short life that we might see the lily in all its glory.
This is the case with this native wild orchid, known as Lady's Slipper or Moccasin-flower.
Having arrived too late in 2007, I returned with my beloved Becky in 2008 and we found it!
(Actually she spotted it: she has a sharper eye than I do!)
Botanists have given this woodland beauty the name, Cypripedium acaule.
The prefix harks back to the ancient common name for other members of this family found in Europe.
The Greeks said this orchid was so beautiful it must belong to Aphrodite (also called Kypris) and pedilon or slipper, so "Aphrodite's slipper."
Hooray for GPS! It lets me return to a lily, and also keeps this old coot from getting himself lost in the piney woods.
Go to the Main Directory to consider more lilies of the field.