When it came to choosing their provincial emblems, Prince Edward Islanders have consistently chosen ones with a very high cute-quotient. First, there’s the Island Girl herself, Anne of Green Gables. Then there’s the official bird, the blue jay, and the fox (two face-to-face on the provincial coat-of-arms). Finally, there’s the Lady’s Slipper, a flower with an almost fairy-like woodland charm.

There’s something else all these creatures have in common besides their adorable looks: each one of them is a master of using their wits to get exactly what they want: Anne defined girl-power long before manufactured teenaged rock stars bared their bellies to cash in on the concept; fox and wily are practically synonymous; and, when it comes to emptying bird feeders, the squirrel has nothing on a jay with mouths to feed back in the nest.

But the smartest and most cunning of all may be the Lady’s Slipper. Behind that pretty little pink Cinderella-slipper-of-a-flower lies a trap so elaborate, complex and clever that it could teach Madonna a trick or two. Here’s how it works: it’s an early summer afternoon in the forest. Along comes the hardworking, unsuspecting bumble bee. He sees a bright pink beacon and zooms over for a better look. “Aha, the sweet smell of nectar! I’ll just climb in here and… hey, what the?!”

The rolled-in, slippery inside surface of the flower makes climbing back out the top impossible. Adding insult to injury, the smell was a trick - there’s no nectar! Stuck and frantic, the bumble bee scrambles to find an escape route. Finally his feet touch a solid pathway of stiff hairs that lead him toward a distant light in the heel of the slipper. The light is coming from two escape holes and the transparent windows on either side of them. The pathway narrows as he crawls, forcing him to squeeze under and rub his back against the surface of the stigma. Just as he reaches the opening, a perfectly placed anther wipes a streak of sticky pollen on his back before he’s finally sprung from the trap.

Messing with bees is just one of the intricate relationships in the Lady’s Slipper’s world. The soil beneath them must also contain a colony of the fungus, mycorrhiza, for the flower to flourish. These fungi form filament networks in the soil that provide water and nutrients to the plant. This is also why transplanting the flowers has a 99.9% failure rate. And, since the lure of the Lady’s Slipper is so strong, strict laws have been passed making it illegal to pluck them from the wild.

Prince Edward Island, along with its Pacific bookend, Victoria, is about as pretty and charming as Canada gets. But don’t assume cute is all there is to say about Canada’s smallest province. Scratch the surface and you’ll find shrewdness, skill and determination to succeed – all perfectly wrapped in this remarkable flower.