Saving Cypripedium acaule....

For the last several years I've admired a group of Cypripedium acaule on my daily walk. Today I decided to ask the home owner if she minded if I took some pictures of the plants. She is a older (83) lady and told me that they are selling the house. She mentioned that all of 'this', meaning her wooded front lawn would be gone. The new buyers want to plant grass. She asked me if I would like to dig them up and take them home. I know how hard these plants are to transplant so I wonder if it would be better to call upon an expert to dig them? Or give them a go in my yard? My yard is very similar to the conditions they are in right now but I can tell her yard is much more acidic then mine as she has wild blueberries growing all over the place.

My question is? Has anyone been successful in transplanting these? I know about digging a large root ball and taking near by soil. Anything else I need to know?

Thanks,
Kristi

I know it's possible to do, I've seen it done but they didn't live very long. I got a bunch of hits googling:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&&q=transplanting+cypripedium

Very nice links you came up with claypa.

Say Kristi, I'd say try. Even if you fail, you will have tried. There's not much more you can do but go on line and see what you can learn to try to meet as many of their cultural requirements as possible. I hope you do accept her offer. I don't believe she would have extended that offer to you if she didn't care about the plants. The other thing you might do is ask her if it would be ok to call a native plant society. Let her know how beautiful they are and that it's a shame the new owners want grass where they are currently growing. Most people don't like to see anything destroyed and if somebody from a local native plant society came over and took even three of them, the genotype might have a better chance of being preserved. Just my thoughts but I sure do hope you try a few. We all kill plants, that's part of the learning curve. Don't feel bad if you kill them.

A large rootball should negate you having to take additional soil from the surrounding area so save your back on that one. A larger than normal rootball will be perfectly fine.

Here's The Native Plant Society of New Jersey website www.npsnj.org Good luck.

datdog, this might be a long shot depending on your circumstances, but I bet a front-end loader would be ideal to scoop up a large shallow piece of earth with these plants in it. The roots are "three feet in any direction and 2" deep".

Just a thought, maybe someone in your circle has one or could rent one. But maybe the plants aren't near a road or pavement, it could be too much trouble.