Shooting Star Babies

 

I found a bunch of baby shooting star plants today.

Dodecatheon jeffreyi is a species of flowering plant in the primrose family known by the common names Sierra shooting star, Jeffrey’s shooting star, and tall mountain shooting star. This wildflower is native to western North America from California to Alaska to Montana, where it grows in mountain meadows and streambanks. This is a thick-rooted perennial with long, slightly wrinkled leaves around the base. It erects slim, tall, hairy stems which are dark in color and are topped with inflorescences of 3 to 18 showy flowers. Each flower nods with its mouth pointed to the ground when new, and becomes more erect with age. It has four or five reflexed sepals in shades of pink, lavender, or white which lie back against the body of the flower. Each sepal base has a blotch of bright yellow. From the corolla mouth protrude large dark anthers surrounding a threadlike stigma. The flowers of this species were considered good luck by the Nlaka’pamux people, who used them as amulets and love charms.

Flower Family: Primrose

Scientific Name: Dodecatheon jeffreyi

Usual Color: Red-pink

The specific epithet jeffreyi is in honor of John Jeffrey.

John Jeffrey (14 November 1826 – 1854) was a Scottish botanist and plant-hunter active in the United States.

Jeffrey was born in Forneth, Parish of Clunie, west of Blairgowrie and Rattray in east Perthshire. While working as a gardener for Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden, he was appointed by a Scottish group known as the Oregon Association (established 1849) to travel to North America. There he would collect seeds and continue the efforts of botanist David Douglas (1799–1834).

Jeffrey arrived at Hudson Bay in August 1850 and travelled more than 1,200 miles (1,900 km) overland to reach the Columbia River. He then spent the next four years exploring Washington, Oregon, and California, sending his specimens back to Scotland. In 1854 he disappeared while travelling from San Diego across the Colorado Desert. Despite attempts to find him, he was never seen again.

At the time, Jeffrey was criticized for poor results but his discoveries, particularly of conifers, were significant. The Jeffrey Pine (Pinus jeffreyi), which he discovered near California's Mount Shasta in 1852, and the flowering plant Dodecatheon jeffreyi were named in his honor.