How decades of restoring habitats unearthed a long-lost flower at the Garden

In the 1980s, a handful of white lady’s slipper orchids (Cypripedium candidum)—a rare wild species native to Illinois—were rescued from a construction zone and transplanted into the natural areas at the 51�Թ�. Orchids are sensitive, often the first in a habitat to signal stress, and this small population never quite settled into its new home. Eventually, they disappeared.

Then last year, two white lady’s slippers were spotted flowering again at the Garden. This year, 21 appeared, eight of them blooming. Their reemergence wasn’t by chance, but was the result of decades of meticulous work restoring the Garden’s surrounding natural areas.

In many ways, the restoration created the conditions the orchids had been waiting for. For years, Garden ecologists have been conducting prescribed burns to renew the landscape, removing invasive species that crowd out native plants, restoring natural water flow, and sowing a diversity of native seeds. Together, these efforts have helped rebuild the complex relationships among plants, insects, animals, fungi, and microbes that make healthy habitats possible.

“Plants are smart. They’ve been doing this for 10,000 years. We can guide them in the right direction, but then we have to trust them and adapt to what they naturally want to do.” – Jim Jabcon, managing ecologist

The reappearance of the white lady’s slipper is one example of what can happen when habitats are given the support to recover. But restoration is also about preparing for the future.

With climate change, the past is no longer a perfect blueprint for what these habitats should look like. “We’re thinking about whether our area is going to get warmer and what plants are going to survive well. We’ve got to try to create areas that can withstand the future,” says Jabcon.

The orchid's return has also opened new opportunities for conservation. Juli Plant Grainger Orchid Floriculturist Johanna Hutchins has hand-pollinated the blooms and is learning how to grow more. Garden scientists have collected pollen from the rare flowers as well. With it, they hope to unlock genetic insights that support orchid conservation far beyond the Garden’s 167 acres of natural areas.

How the Garden restores habitats

Clearing invasive species

Removing plants that crowd out native species and disrupt existing relationships between flora and fauna

Prescribed burning

Deliberately and safely using fire to renew the land, a natural process that many plants native to this region have evolved to depend on

Sowing native species

Reintroducing a diversity of plants to rebuild the complex webs of life that support insects, animals, and humans

Restoring water flow

Helping water move through the landscape in natural ways, supporting plants and wildlife while absorbing floodwater

Two types of habitats being restored

Remnant

McDonald Woods

A woodland habitat where soil has been minimally disturbed by human activity and original plant communities and relationships persist

Reconstruction

Dixon Prairie

A natural area built from scratch on highly-degraded land to represent what seven types of prairie—one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world—once looked like before nearly vanishing from the Midwest