Cypripedium guttatumSw.

Spotted lady's slipperspotted lady's slipper

WFO wfo-0000935389 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cypripedium guttatum, photographed by Оксана Серикова
fig. a Оксана Серикова, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-03 / obs. 203598336

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 32 botanical countries

Regions where Cypripedium guttatum is native: Altay, Amur, Buryatiya, China North-Central, China South-Central, Chita, Inner Mongolia, Irkutsk, Japan, Khabarovsk, Korea, Krasnoyarsk, Magadan, Manchuria, Mongolia, Primorye, Tibet, Tuva, West Siberia, Yakutiya, East Himalaya, Myanmar, Belarus, Central European Russia, East European Russia, North European Russia, South European Russia, Ukraine, Alaska, Aleutian Is., Northwest Territories, Yukon AltayAmurBuryatiyaChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChitaInner MongoliaIrkutskJapanKhabarovskKrasnoyarskMagadanManchuriaMongoliaPrimoryeTibetTuvaWest SiberiaYakutiyaEast HimalayaMyanmarBelarusCentral European RussiaEast European RussiaNorth European RussiaSouth European RussiaUkraineAlaskaNorthwest TerritoriesYukon Korea
Native distribution of Cypripedium guttatum, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Amur AMU
Buryatiya BRY
China North-Central CHN
China South-Central CHC
Chita CTA
Inner Mongolia CHI
Irkutsk IRK
Japan JAP
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Magadan MAG
Manchuria CHM
Mongolia MON
Primorye PRM
Tibet CHT
Tuva TVA
West Siberia WSB
Yakutiya YAK
Belarus BLR EUROPE
Central European Russia RUC
East European Russia RUE
North European Russia RUN
South European Russia RUS
Ukraine UKR
Alaska ASK NORTHERN AMERICA
Aleutian Is. ALU
Northwest Territories NWT
Yukon YUK
East Himalaya EHM ASIA-TROPICAL
Myanmar MYA

Not drawn on the map: Aleutian Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 280 in flower of 295 examined

Proportion of examined Cypripedium guttatum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 0 0 too few examined
May 9 9 100% 70% to 100%
Jun 219 222 99% 96% to 100%
Jul 52 55 95% 85% to 98%
Aug 0 7 0% 0% to 35%
Sep 0 2 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Cypripedium guttatum observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 280 of 295 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,898 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -30.1 °C -21.9 °C -16.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 17.5 °C 23.0 °C 24.9 °C
Annual rainfall 385 mm 519 mm 1,003 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 16 mm 52 mm 122 mm

It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,898 research-grade observations of Cypripedium guttatum that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 11 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cypripedium bouffordianum Yong H.Zhang & H.Sun
  • Cypripedium calceolus var. variegatum Falk
  • Cypripedium guttatum f. albiflorum Aver.
  • Cypripedium guttatum f. bouffordianum (Yong H.Zhang & H.Sun) J.M.H.Shaw
  • Cypripedium guttatum f. latifolium Rouy ex E.G.Camus
  • Cypripedium guttatum f. punicum Y.N.Lee
  • Cypripedium guttatum f. redowskii (Rchb.f.) Soó
  • Cypripedium guttatum var. koreanum Nakai
  • Cypripedium guttatum var. redowskii Rchb.f.
  • Cypripedium orientale Spreng.
  • Cypripedium variegatum Georgi

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.