Native plants for a Cape Cod garden

This little plant is just spectacular, although it is fairly shortlived. By summer the flowers and rosetted leaves will be a faint memory. But this year the pictures live on!

There are several different color schemes, ranging from white to pink to deep purple. The ones I acquired from the New England Wild Flower Society last year are the latter. The flowers are exotic looking. Dodecatheon meadia has an interesting pollination scheme: When a bumblebee visits the flowers and rapidly vibrates its indirect flight muscles at a high frequency, a cloud of pollen is released into the air and onto the bumblebee. The plantworld’s equivalent of a nice young lady macing the brute that’s bothering her, I suppose.

Supposedly, shooting stars are easily divided from the rosette after flowering. I have not tried this yet as I only have a small contingent of plants. It is recommended that the flowerheads be removed prior to division to prevent seeding, and to ensure that all of the plant’s energy goes to adapting to its new environment.

Bringing star power to the woodland garden

Not much is known about the culinary uses of this particular shooting star species. Other Dodecatheons have some documented uses: Roots of D. hendersonii were reportedly roasted and eaten, and the flowers of D. hendersonii and D. jeffreyi are reportedly edible. Leaves of these two species have been as salad greens according to Francois Couplan in his book, The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America. I am probably not going to try this myself…