shooting star ‘Aphrodite’

Dodecatheon ‘Aphrodite’ (shooting star) are pointy, rocket shaped flowers emerge on multiple six inch stems above a rosette of soft leaves. In area prairies you will find the bloom is typically white and sometimes pale pink.

A nice close-up picture will reveal colorful detail around this flower’s corolla. While you’re near, be sure to smell this little bloom’s grape sent. This cultivar bears magenta blooms that often seed to other the same color or a slightly paler pink color. We allow both the seeded and the original, long-lived plants to fill-in anywhere they please all along the entire south end of the garden. They are pollinated by queen bumblebees, our favorite fuzzy insect in April as they fly around looking for food from flowers as well as a place to lay eggs in our garden beds, which intentionally are left with the debris from last year’s plants, to provide habitat for growing colonies of native bumblebees. These sweet flowers were called prairie pointers by the early settlers of the Midwest.