NEW SHARON — Lady slippers are only rarely found in the woods – except around Eugene Martineau’s New Sharon home.

“Last year, I counted over 1,100 of them,” he said. “I didn’t count them this year because I wasn’t up to it.”

When he purchased the Starks Road property in 1982, a few pink lady slippers were in evidence. “Those few became many,” said Martineau, who mentioned that his 83rd birthday will be this month.

He hasn’t put any water or anything else on them to help them grow. Instead, Martineau has left the colorful flowers to Mother Nature’s whims, and they have put on quite a show in the nooks and crannies of the woods surrounding his home.

Martineau took this reporter on a tour in a golf cart that he uses to get around his property. A series of trails meander through the woods, and glimpses of the nearby Sandy River can be seen through openings in the trees.

“This used to be a campground, The Crackling Log Campground,” he said. And indeed, one can still see where campsites used to be located.

The lady slippers started blooming about two weeks ago, said Martineau. No matter how harsh the winter is, “it doesn’t seem to bother them,” he said. The plant is hardy enough that Martineau remembers one growing out of the stump of a small tree.

“Once in a while, rodents will do a job on them,” he said.

Lady slippers don’t have a deep root. Martineau said that one of the factors that makes them rare is when the seed is dispersed on the ground, it takes 8-10 years for it to germinate.

The flowers are in bloom for several weeks, generally sometime in mid-May until mid-June. In that time, bees go to them and go into the blossom. The blossom then closes behind them as they pollinate. The bees exit through the top of the flower.

Once the blooming season is over, the little neck at the end of the blossom stays on the plant, and the blossom falls off. In order to survive and reproduce when the seeds are released and scattered by the wind in the spring and fall, pink lady’s slipper interacts with a fungus in the soil from the Rhizoctonia genus, according to www.fs.fed.us.

Generally, orchid seeds do not have food supplies inside them like most other kinds of seeds. Pink lady’s slipper seeds require threads of the fungus to break open the seed and attach them to it. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients to the pink lady’s slipper seed.

When the lady’s slipper plant is older and producing most of its own nutrients, the fungus will extract nutrients from the orchid roots. This mutually beneficial relationship between the orchid and the fungus is known as “symbiosis” and is typical of almost all orchid species.

The lady slippers grow in clusters around Martineau’s trails. They grow in shaded or at least partially shaded areas, and in soil that is acidic but well-drained.

The flowers vary somewhat in color from magenta to whitish. “I think they pale out, but I’m not 100 percent sure of that,” said Martineau. “I had one two years ago that had two blossoms on the same stem, one below the other,” he added.

He has marked where the lady slippers are located with small flags, which is the system that he uses to count them. Martineau said that he used to keep a record in a spiral notebook. When that one got wet, he started a new notebook.

Martineau also stays busy by volunteering at Franklin Memorial Hospital. “I was security at the hospital for 14 years,” he noted.

[email protected]