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 x'^tlantic 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 5-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 halt the size 

 ot the species type, and paler or white. 



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