Yellow Lady's Slipper

Cypripedium parviflorum

Pollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers May to June; fruits July to August
Type	wildflower
Sun	Partial shade, full shade
Water	Medium, high
Soil	pH 6–7.5
Hardiness	zone 2–7
Mature height	0.5 m
Mature spread	0.45 m
Spacing	0.3 m
Years to maturity	7
Bloom	May–Jun
Flower colour	Yellow not verified, a genus-level estimate
In bloom	May June
Fruit	Jul–Aug
Native to	AB, SK

elliptic leaves about 15 cm long

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

227 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 29 herbarium specimens and 610 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 672 records, high confidence
Northern Continental Divide south AB: 410 records, high confidence
Eastern Continental Ranges central AB: 162 records, high confidence
Mid-Boreal Uplands central AB / SK: 143 records, high confidence
Western Alberta Upland central AB: 116 records, high confidence
Boreal Transition central AB / SK: 104 records, high confidence
Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 39 records, high confidence
Fescue Grassland south AB: 18 records, medium confidence
Peace Lowland north AB: 3 records, low confidence
Slave River Lowland north AB: 3 records, low confidence

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Source: GBIF occurrence search + PRESERVED_SPECIMEN pass, retrieved 2026-08-24. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

7 documented relationships.

pollen for

Agapostemon texanus Robertson 1929
Pemphredon inornata Robertson 1929
Pipiza femoralis Robertson 1929
Pseudopanurgus parvus Robertson 1929

nectar for

Calligrapher Fly Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Tetracis cachexiata Specimen records from iNaturalist.org

caterpillar host for

Megachile melanophaea Specimen records from scan-bugs.org

Also worth knowing

Safety

Toxicity not assessed, absence of a warning is not a guarantee of safety

Buying it

About $18–$40 per plant (estimate), hard to find in the trade. Estimate (specialist / rare); AB retail as of 2026

Where these numbers came from

Flower detail: not verified, a genus-level estimate