Minnesota Symbols, State Bird & State Flower

The common loon is one of the earth's oldest living bird species. Its name comes from a Norwegian word that means "wild, sad cry." Approximately 12,000 make their homes in Minnesota. Loons are large black-and-white birds with long black bills. Clumsy on land, they are excellent divers, underwater swimmers, and high-speed flyers.

Identification Tips

• Length: 24 inches Wingspan: 58 inches
• Sexes similar
• Large diving bird with long body that rides low in the water
• Large bill is straight, tapers to a point, and is held horizontally
• Feet set far back on body, and trail behind body in flight
• Upperwings wholly dark in flight

Adult alternate

• Black bill
• Black head
• Black neck with white markings
• White chest and belly
• Black back with white checkering and spotting

Adult basic

• Pale gray bill
• Gray-brown cap, forehead, nape, hindneck and back
• White face, eye ring, chin, throat, foreneck and belly
• Jagged border between white foreneck and dark hindneck

Immature

• Like basic-plumaged adult but often with paler bill and white scalloping on back

The pink and white lady slipper is one of Minnesota's rarest wildflowers. Thriving in swamps, bogs, and damp woods, they grow slowly, taking 4 to 16 years to produce their first flower. Sometimes they live for 50 years and grow four feet tall. They bloom in late June or early July. It is illegal to pick the lady slipper.

In 1990, Governor Rudy Perpich declared 81 miles of Highway 11 a Minnesota Wildflower Route, in honor of the hundreds of thousands of Showy Lady's-Slippers growing within sight of the road. The town of Williams held a celebration of the event, which became an annual Wildflower Day. The state put up signs depicting the Showy Lady's-Slipper to mark the route, and pledged to expand the highway only to the south, protecting the masses of Showies Lady's-Slippers on the north side of the road.

Common Names: Lady's-slipper and queen lady's-slipper

Plant: Fairly large plant, grows to 18" tall, has large leaves, arising from a rhizome with a fascicle of numerous fibrous roots several to many stems may arise from the same rootstock.

Leaves: Leaves are a light green colour and 3-5, ovate, plicate, 10-25 cm long and 4-16 cm wide; densely pubescent.

Flowers: 1-2(3), each subtended by a lanceolate green foliaceous bract 6-14 cm long by 3-7 cm wide.

Sepals: Apparently two (the result of the fusion of the two lateral sepals behind the labellum), white; dorsal sepal ovate to obovate, 3-5 cm long and 2-3.5 cm wide; lateral sepals united, white, ovate, 3-5 cm long and 1.5-3.5 cm wide.

Petals: Blooms are white with a reddish-purple pouch. 2.5-4 cm long and 1-1.5 cm wide.

Labellum: Pouch-shaped, inflated, spherical (or nearly so), 2.5-5.5 cm long, opening above with inrolled edges; white suffused with deep rose to magenta, the veins often being white; rarely the whole being white or rose.

Hardiness. Zones 3 to 8 This is a genuinely "queenly" plant, as the species name "reginae" suggests. It is among the more easily grown of our native lady's slippers, provided you understand its needs.