King ex Rolfe
Description
Cypripedium tibeticum is a terrestrial slipper orchid of the high Sino-Himalaya, native to China, India and Bhutan and reaching the eastern Tibetan plateau, with several hundred recorded occurrences concentrated in the mountains of southwest China. It is a plant of subalpine and alpine habitats, growing in open coniferous and Rhododendron woodland, scrub margins, grassy slopes and damp meadows, generally between about 2300 and 4200 m. The individual shown at Tsochenchen in Bhutan at 3600 m in June illustrates its flowering in early summer in cool, humus-rich montane turf.
The plant is a perennial herb arising from a short, creeping rhizome with fleshy roots, producing erect stems each bearing usually three to four broadly elliptic to ovate, plicate leaves with prominent venation. The solitary, terminal flower is large and conspicuous, subtended by a leafy bract. The sepals and petals are deep purple to blackish-maroon, often paler-veined, the dorsal sepal broad and the lateral sepals fused into a synsepal beneath the lip. The defining feature is the large, inflated, pouch-like labellum, deep wine-purple and reticulately veined, which functions as a trap pollination chamber. The column bears a flat, sterile staminode, and the fruit is an erect capsule.
The species belongs to Cypripedium section Cypripedium, the temperate slipper orchids, and is among the most variable and widespread members in the Himalayan–Tibetan region, with several varieties described. Its showy flowers and deceptive food-mimic pollination by bees make it of pollination-biological interest. Heavily threatened by collection and habitat disturbance, it is listed on CITES Appendix II and is of genuine conservation concern across its range.
Author: King ex Rolfe · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, The Orchids of Bhutan (Pearce & Cribb), Cribb The Genus Cypripedium, CITES Appendices