Sw.
Description
Cypripedium guttatum is a broadly circumboreal slipper orchid with one of the widest ranges in its genus, documented across Russia, China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan, Bhutan and into North America, the nearly 4900 records reflecting its extensive Eurasian-American boreal distribution. At the southern Himalayan limit of its range it ascends into cool montane forest, the images recording plants on the Yetong-La in Bhutan at about 3050 to 3100 m in June. It grows in coniferous and mixed woodland, forest margins, grassy clearings and on mossy, humus-rich or calcareous ground, typically in light shade with consistent soil moisture.
It is a small terrestrial orchid spreading by slender creeping rhizomes, often forming loose colonies. The erect stem bears usually two subopposite, broadly elliptic to ovate, plicate leaves with conspicuous parallel venation. A single terminal flower is produced; the characteristic inflated, pouch-shaped labellum and the sepals and petals are white boldly blotched and mottled with rose-purple to magenta, the lateral sepals being fused into a synsepal beneath the lip. As in all Cypripedium the column bears two fertile anthers and a shield-like staminode, and the flower offers no nectar reward, attracting small bee pollinators by deceit before the inferior ovary matures into a capsule of dust-like seeds.
The species is placed in section Trigonopedia of Cypripedium and is notable for its small stature and strikingly spotted bicoloured flower. Like other slipper orchids it depends on mycorrhizal fungi for seed germination and establishment, and reproduces both clonally via rhizomes and by minute wind-dispersed seed. Although its overall range is vast and it is locally abundant in parts of Siberia, populations at the range periphery, including the Himalaya, are sparse, and the species faces collection and habitat-loss pressures that warrant local conservation attention.
Author: Sw. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Genera Orchidacearum (Cypripedioideae), Cribb monograph of the genus Cypripedium