Yellow Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum)

Etymology:Cypripedium parviflorum, [from the Latin Cypris or Greek Kupris meaning ‘Venus’ and ‘Aphrodite’ respectively] + [the Latin pedisor Greekpedilon meaning ‘foot’ and ‘slipper’ respectively] [From the Latin parvi, meaning ‘small’] and [florum, meaning ‘plant’] 

Also called a Moccasin Flower, Wah-on-nay Moccasinun, Koo-Koo-Lee Moccasinun

What Are They and Where to Find Them: An orchid native to North America. One of numerous color variations of its kind. There are four main varieties which vary in color and shape. The plant is common and widespread in North America, it is legal to pick in most places. [There are, however, rare and endangered varieties of Lady’s Slippers, be cautious.] They can be found growing in mesic forests, woodlands, fens, prairies, and meadows, though I have found them predominately growing on the shady forest floors beneath Cyprus Trees. 

Native Medicine: [Warning: Do Not Try These Remedies Yourself, without doing the proper research] The Lady’s Slipper was used historically by Native Americans as a medicinal plant to bring down fevers, cure headaches, and ease cramps and labor pains. The Yellow Lady’s Slipper was the most commonly used. Drinking tinctures of Lady Slipper’s roots is said to ease insomnia, anxiety, and bring emotional calm. To do this the roots would be collected, dried, and ground into a powder. (The active chemicals in the plants [cypripedin] are said to taste and smell rather revolting though.)

Symbology: Considered to have a powerful feminine energy, and was used medicinally for distinctly female illnesses. Over the years they have come to represent death, distinctly the death of Native American tribes. In one poem “The Moccasin Flower” by Elaine Goodale Eastman, the flower represents isolationandpride in self. In Victorian “flower language” the lady’s slipper represents “capricious beauty”.

It can be said that this plant can be used in spells involving self-worth, focus, easing anxiety, determination, sacrifice, anddeath. Pink Lady Slippers can be symbolic of love andlust. 

Mythos: In old Anishinaabe lore (specific to Mackinac Island, MI and the Michilimackinac area) these flowers were said to be the slippers of the giant faeries that roamed the Great Lakes area in ancient times. They say, though, that when white men arrived to the land the spirits and faeries fled to the spirit world through the Great Arch on Mackinac Island and some of the faeries lost their slippers on their way through the portal. These slippers fell to the ground and became the Lady’s Slippers that grow there today. 

Another such Ojibwa legend goes that there was once a tribe that was visited by a horrible illness. Even the medicine man died. It was winter, when messages would not be able to be sent because of the dangers of the cold but the chief called his mizhiniway (messenger) to go retrieve medicines from a neighboring tribe to save their people. Unfortunately the messenger fell sick as well. The tribe was in despair. But then, the messenger, Koo-Koo-Lee’s wife declared that she would travel across the ice and bring back the medicines for her people. Days passed and one day they heard a woman’s faint crying “Koo-Koo-Lee, come a save me” and there was his wife, stumbling across the ice, her feet torn to ribbons by the ice and frostbite, but nevertheless holding the bad of medicines in her arms. They brought her inside and wrapped her feet. With the medicines the sick people of the tribe were healed but the messenger’s wife, thereafter known as Wah-on-nay, died from her injuries and upon her death the wrappings on her feet turned to little yellow flowers, the lady’s slippers. (Some say that the flowers came from the bandages and some say they sprouted from her footprints, in some tellings they are yellow and in others they are pink.)