Primula (Dodecatheon) jeffreyi

Primulaceae

Dodecatheon jeffreyi

Dodecatheon jeffreyi in the wild

The 'shooting stars' are American Primula relatives (in fact defined as being primulas in one recent paper), requiring similar cool, moist conditions. All have characteristic flowers with sharply reflexed petals.

Primula (Dodecatheon) jeffreyi produces delightful fragrant blooms in shades of magenta, lavender or white, above the characteristic basal clump of lance-shaped leaves.
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		Primula (Dodecatheon) alpinum subsp. alpinum NNS02-132 comes from wet places at nearly 3000 m in the Sierra Nevada, northern California, and is a truly alpine form of the species. The plants are small, with tufts of leaves just 5 cm long, but the flowers are relatively large, six or more in an umbel, violet with yellow centres.
		Primula (Dodecatheon) dentatum has white flowers with yellow centres.
		Primula (Dodecatheon) jeffreyi NNS08-119 is probably the largest Dodecatheon, with tall flower stems carrying 25 or more flowers and leaves up to 45 cm long. The flowers have the central white colour extending outwards, becoming "lavender pink to pale violet" at the petal tips. This collection comes from the Salmon River Mountains in Idaho, at about 2000 m.
		Primula (Dodecatheon) meadia is a vigorous, reliable species, with umbels of many pink flowers, sometimes very many.
		Primula (Dodecatheon) meadia f. album is a white-flowered variety of a vigorous, reliable species. There is usually a good number of flowers in the umbel.
		Primula (Dodecatheon) pauciflora var. pauciflora is a dwarf alpine species, with bright pink flowers with a yellow centre surrounded by a narrow white ring. Its taxonomic status is not clear. It is recognised as a species in its own right by some authorities, but others place it as a subspecies of D. pauciflorum - which is turn is sometimes regarded as a synonym of D. meadia! Recent work reclassifying all dodecatheons as primulas didn't give this a particular name, so it presumably will be included in Primula pauciflora.