PRIMULACEAE PRIMROSE FAMILY 
SHOOTING STAR 
Dodecatheon Meadia L. 
The only claim to eminence or economic importance that 
can be made by the Primrose family lies in the beauty of some of 
its flowers, but the claim is a good one and shared by Primroses 
and Shooting Stars alike. The 
pert nodding flowers of this hand- 
some species decorate moist cliffs 
and ridges in open woodlands and 
prairies from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific and from southern Canada 
to Texas. 
This. perennial has a stout 
underground stem and _ fibrous 
roots. The leaves are clustered 
at the base of the simple, naked 
flowering stem, which grows 8-24 
inches high. 
The pedicels curve so that the 
flowers are nodding in bloom as 
shown, but they straighten as the 
fruits ripen so that the latter are 
erect when mature. The calyx is 
deeply 5s-lobed and persistent. 
At first the lobes are turned back 
but in fruit they are erect. The 
corolla varies from rose-pink to 
white and its 5 lobes are turned 
back. To the throat are attached the 5 stamens with their short 
flat filaments converging into a conelike structure. This conical 
formation is continued by the long tapering anthers, attached 
to the filaments by their bases and separate from each other. 
The threadlike unbranched style of the single pistil extends 
through the open tip of the anther cone. The fruit is a capsule 
containing numerous minute seeds. 
Always growing under the overhang of moist cliffs, and found in 
Illinois only in the south, is the other Shooting Star, Dodecatheon 
Meadia L. var. Frenchii Vasey. The ovate leaves are abruptly con- 
tracted into narrow petioles and the flowers are about half the size 
of the species type, and paler or white. 
233 
