Wildflower Crusaders

When Omena’s Chuck and Janet Dickerson were in their 70s, they embarked on a 10-year quest to bring native lady slippers back to a Northport Preserve.

By Ross Boissoneau | March 3, 2018

What does it take to grow wildflowers? In the case of lady slippers, one of the region’s native orchids, quite a lot. Just ask Chuck and Janet Dickerson of Omena, who have spent a decade trying to grow and then replant them. “They’re very sensitive, touchy plants. That’s why there are so few,” said Chuck Dickerson.

Once the showpiece bloom of northern Michigan forests, lady slippers have become increasingly rare. At the Soper Natural Area near Northport, observers counted at least 1,000 lady slippers in 1995. In 2002, only six flowers bloomed.

There are many potential reasons for the flowers’ decline. “They’re like candy for deer,” said Tom Nelson, the executive director of the Leelanau Conservancy. Another reason is because they are so pretty, people will remove them from the wild to try to transplant the flowers at home. “People are not aware of how fragile some members of the biological community are,” Nelson said.

The flowers are also notoriously picky about their environment and do not reproduce easily. They favor a marshy environment, and Nelson said that’s likely another reason for the flowers’ decreasing numbers; the area of the Soper Preserve has seen drier conditions over the past few years.

Enter the Dickersons. Chuck had been interested in wild plants since attending pharmacy school at Ferris in the late ’50s, where one of his professors would take the class on expeditions seeking specific medicinal plants. Janet is a longtime master gardener. So when Chuck wanted to return to Michigan after living in Missouri for 32 years, the only way he could persuade his wife to move was to promise to build her a greenhouse.

Janet got her greenhouse, and a decade ago, the couple — both passionate about ridding northern Michigan of its alien plants — decided to use their greenhouse to support native wildlife in a bigger, bolder way.  They would propagate one of the north’s most finicky plants: native lady slippers. 

Even with the controlled conditions of a greenhouse — and partially because of them — propagating lady slippers isn’t as easy as popping some seeds into soil and watering them for a couple months. In the wild, the plant has a symbiotic relationship with a fungus that strips the seed coat and provides the germinating seed nutrients to grow.

Without a line on such fungus, the Dickersons took a different tack. As in — Clorox. The Dickersons used the bleach to remove the seed coat before rinsing the seed thoroughly. Then they enlisted the assistance of a botanist from Wisconsin, and had the seeds spend their first 18 months in a sterile culture. Then they moved the seedlings to their greenhouse.

By the time the plants had finally matured to the point where they were deemed ready to transplant, their numbers had decreased tenfold, from 700 to 70. Nevertheless, the Conservancy took the few dozen successes and planted them in the Soper Preserve, where they had previously flourished, this time protecting them with an eight-foot high fence. “The exclosure allowed the lady slippers to take root,” said Nelson. And, of course, the Dickersons funded and helped install that fence.

From start to finish, the project took most of a decade. And it will be several more years before the participants can say for sure whether it was a success. 

So why all the hoopla? It certainly wasn’t the ease of the project. In fact, the challenge was part of the appeal. “Orchids are the hardest to grow. That’s why we picked them,” said Dickerson with a chuckle. Nor was it for accolades, though for their efforts, the Dickersons were named volunteers of the year for 2017 by the Leelanau Conservancy.

“It’s been a joy to work with them,” said Becky Hill, the natural areas and preserve manager for the Leelanau Conservancy. She said the Dickersons knew the project would take at least 10 years, and even though they began it when they were in their 70s, they didn’t hesitate. They are, she said, “in their 80s with the hearts of 20-year-olds.”

The overriding motivation for those connected with the project was they saw it as a way to help protect, preserve and further the natural environment. “We want to see what the forest can do if given a chance,” said Nelson of this and other efforts, many of which involve protecting plants from threats such as deer. “The deer population is large. It’s a real problem for biodiversity,” he added.

While some think of orchids as warm-weather flowers, the truth is that lady slippers are just one of the many varieties native to Michigan. “We have a number of orchids. Some are not that showy,” said Hill.  That’s certainly not the case with lady slippers. “They’re so beautiful.” 

Nelson concurred. “They represent some of the most beautiful aspects of the natural landscape. They’re an emblem of sorts of all the good things about our natural resources.”