Summary
It was June 1980, my first year in the Ozarks, and I was beginning to make friends with Arkansas botanists. One botanical friend I accompanied on searches for rare plants was Richard H. Davis (1946–1983), a field ecologist for The Nature Conservancy under contract with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission. He was particularly interested in rediscovering rare plants in historical locations recorded on herbarium specimens, but not seen in their native habitats for decades.
On one exhilarating hike, we rediscovered the location of the rare Ozark-endemic yellow coneflower (Echinacea paradoxa var. paradoxa, Asteraceae), which is the only Echinacea species with yellow flowers instead of the usual purple. Another excursion took us to a historical location for the most southwestern known population of showy lady’s slipper (Cypripedium reginae, Orchidaceae), known in older works as C. spectabile. This lady’s slipper is both a “queen” and a “spectacle,” as the species names imply. It is the largest and most impressive native North American orchid and grows up to three feet tall with gorgeous three-inch-wide flowers that are whitish to translucent red on the pinkish side. It is Minnesota’s state flower.