newsminer.com

I've been fascinated by Calypso orchids, also called fairy slippers, since I was a kid reading "Thumbelina," and saw illustrations of the flowers on fairytale characters. Later, I noticed references to the flower by Robert Frost in "An Encounter":

"Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways
Half looking for the orchid Calypso."

I also started half looking for Calypso bulbosa, which is found around the circumpolar north, although it's increasingly rare in populated areas. The showy flower grows in shaded forests and doesn't like to be disturbed. Picking the blossoms can kill the plant and they're very difficult to transplant, since they rely on specific characteristics of the soil. They're endangered or threatened in many states.

I happened to walk up my driveway outside Fairbanks one spring morning a decade ago and found a clump only a foot from the road. Then I found another and soon knew of a dozen sites in the nearby woods where the bright pink flowers would pop up for a few days between Mother's Day and Memorial Day.

The plants, one of 31 orchid species in Alaska, only bloom for about a week and then disappear. There are variations in populations and some are white or a lighter pink than the pinky-purple variety I've seen. I've also seen them called Calypso borealis. Their elusiveness makes them a coveted prize -- so much so that finding one in Ontario in 1864 brought naturalist John Muir to tears and sparked his first published writing. He called it "the Hider of the North." This is an excerpt from a letter he wrote describing his find:

"But when the sun was getting low and everything seemed most bewildering and discouraging, I found beautiful Calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung. The flower was white and made the impression of the utmost simple purity like a snowflower. No other bloom was near it, for the bog a short distance below the surface was still frozen, and the water was ice cold. It seemed the most spiritual of all the flower people I had ever met. I sat down beside it and fairly cried for joy. "