Official Minnesota State Flower

In 1990, Governor Rudy Perpich declared 81 miles of Highway 11 a Minnesota Wildflower Route, in honor of the hundreds of thousands of Showy Lady's-Slippers growing within sight of the road. The town of Williams held a celebration of the event, which became an annual Wildflower Day. The state put up signs depicting the Showy Lady's-Slipper to mark the route, and pledged to expand the highway only to the south, protecting the masses of Showies Lady's-Slippers on the north side of the road.

• Common Names: Lady's-slipper and queen lady's-slipper
• Plant: Fairly large plant, grows to 18" tall, has large leaves, arising from a rhizome with a fascicle of numerous fibrous roots several to many stems may arise from the same rootstock.
• Leaves: Leaves are a light green colour and 3-5, ovate, plicate, 10-25 cm long and 4-16 cm wide; densely pubescent.
• Flowers: 1-2(3), each subtended by a lanceolate green foliaceous bract 6-14 cm long by 3-7 cm wide.
• Sepals: Apparently two (the result of the fusion of the two lateral sepals behind the labellum), white; dorsal sepal ovate to obovate, 3-5 cm long and 2-3.5 cm wide; lateral sepals united, white, ovate, 3-5 cm long and 1.5-3.5 cm wide.
• Petals: Blooms are white with a reddish-purple pouch. 2.5-4 cm long and 1-1.5 cm wide.
• Labellum: Pouch-shaped, inflated, spherical (or nearly so), 2.5-5.5 cm long, opening above with inrolled edges; white suffused with deep rose to magenta, the veins often being white; rarely the whole being white or rose.

• Hardiness. Zones 3 to 8 This is a genuinely "queenly" plant, as the species name "reginae" suggests. It is among the more easily grown of our native lady's slippers, provided you understand its needs.