Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

Shooting Star has a naked flowering stem, which is not tall, usually 8 to 18 inches high with a green to reddish color. The stem is called a scape - an above ground stem coming directly from the root. Only the stem remains upright in mid-summer after the leaves die back.

Leaves are in a basal rosette, each oblong with slightly dentate wavy edges and a prominent central vein. The minor leaf veins form a palmate network. The blade of the leaf gradually tapers into a winged stalk as it enters the ground.

The inflorescence is an umbel of stalked flowers atop the scape and held well above the leaves. There are small lanceolate shape bracts at the base of the inflorescence.

The flowers are upright at first, then eventually nodding. As they mature the corolla lobes turn backward and upward from the flower, resembling how artists depict a shooting star and giving the flower it's name. The corolla lobes (petals) can be pink, lilac, white and shades of all. The corolla tube inside is maroon and yellow, usually with a thick wavy deep maroon ring at the base. This is exposed when the petals reflex. The flower stamens form a cone with the anthers usually yellow. These surround the single pistil which rises from a 5-carpellate ovary. The calyx is green with 5 pointed lobes (the sepals) arranged alternate with the petals but much shorter than the petals. After flowering, the heads turn upward once again while the seeds are maturing.

Seed: Fertile flowers form a 5-valved capsule that is cylindric, with thick walls and whose length is less than 3x the diameter. At maturity it is a dark reddish-brown; the open tops of the capsule then resemble stars as the five valves turn outward. Each capsule contains numerous irregular shaped hard reddish-brown seeds that are scattered by the wind when the stem shakes unless small birds like Goldfinches get them first. Seeds require a short period (20+ days) of cold stratification, then light and cool soil for germination.

Habitat: Shooting Star will do well in sunny spots of the home garden where the soils are well drained - wet-mesic to dry-mesic. It grows from a fibrous root system below a small crown, but it is susceptible to crowding out by more vigorous taller species. Along with Field Pussytoes and Pasque Flower, Shooting Star is one of the first Upland plants to flower. Bees collect pollen and fertilize the plants which produce no nectar. While rare in the wild environment of Minnesota (see below), Dodecatheon meadia is readily available from nurseries and plant specialists that grow native plants.

Names: The genus Dodecatheon, a word meaning "of 12 gods", was originally used with the Primrose family and contains all the plants known as shooting stars. The genus is now considered to be a subgroup of the genus Primula, but with the Dodecatheon name retained. The species name meadia is an honorary named for Richard Mead an English physician (1673-1754) and is the only known use of this name. The honorary was given by the author for the plant classification, 'L.' which refers to Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist and the developer of the binomial nomenclature of modern taxonomy.

Comparisons: There are no confusing plants other than Dodecatheon amethystinum (Fassett) Fassett as explained below.