Cypripedium calceolus in the Gasterntal, Switzerland
The Gasterntal is a steep walled valley which feels remote, even though it’s easily reached on foot or by private minibus from Kandersteg. There are several places to stay, including the Hotel Steinbock in Selden, a tiny hamlet at the end of the road. The Steinbock is run by an Englishwoman married to a Swiss, nice if your German is as feeble as mine.
Because the ladies’ slipper is virtually impossible to cultivate – it hates captivity – I look at it differently from all those alpines that we covet and find clever ways to grow.
Neither, on the other hand, does it seem totally wild in its most famous location in the valley, which has become a place of pilgrimage, circled and intersected by a network of well worn narrow paths. And yet outside those paths I saw no evidence of trampling or picking. There were clearly many visitors but they had all treated the orchids with respect, with reverence even. There is no other northern orchid which approaches the proud extravagance of those from the tropics. And the flowers’ twin colours, chocolate-purple and pale yellow, are unique.
Walking up the valley on a sunny Saturday in late June I met a few other pilgrims. Because I had a camera and was looking at plants, a couple showed me where I could find some of the orchids. Then someone asked me if I knew where they were. Someone else told me that they’d seen some seven years ago but couldn’t remember where. This rare flower was getting people to talk to each other, making the Gasterntal a sociable place, and it’s so unusual to meet other people enjoying the flowers instead of striding swiftly towards the peaks and glaciers.
I soon learnt the orchids’ German name, Frauenschuh: women’s shoe, a matter of fact, down to earth name. Ladies’ slipper is more dainty, more upper class. But my favourite is the French, sabot de Venus, Venus’ clog, because look at the shape, it’s not a shoe, and certainly not a slipper, it has the rounded, full bellied look of a clog. But it’s a clog worn by a goddess: the same apt contradiction as in the old pop song, Venus in Blue Jeans.
The weather soon turned wet, (It was 2012), and when I revisited the flowers the rain drops made them even more beautiful.
Later, I was amazed to find two plants high above the valley on a completely exposed, stony hillside, near the Balmhornhütte. How unusual is that?
