Dodecatheon meadia, Shooting Star or American Cowslip, is a small clump-forming member of the Primulaceae with startlingly beautiful and very diminutive purple flowers in Spring. At home in a moist soil with a shaded or partially shaded aspect, Dodecatheon meadia is a charming and very undemanding herbaceous perennial which after a long dormancy through summer and winter miraculously appears in mid-March and quickly sends up its umbels of delightful elegant flowers with petals that have a streamlined swept-back profile giving rise to their common name of Shooting Star.