This small series of photos portray my favorite type of wildflowers, the shooting stars. The dark-throated shooting star, found throughout the Pacific Northwest, Rockies, and scattered locations in the Southwest, is home in wet alpine meadows usually about 6000 feet elevation (but can be found in other habitats lower than this). There are a number of distinct species that inhabit the west, including alpine, frigid, Jeffrey’s, Handerson’s, Ellis’, Bonneville, scented, poet’s, and dark-throated shooting stars. These species range in distribution and habitat selection across each species with some (Ellis’) being extremely localized to sky island mountaintops in Southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Northern Mexico- while others (dark-throated) are found in every Western state and four Canadian provinces. Each of these species feature magnificent nodding flowers at the end of curved stems, and are pollinated by bees, and can usually be seen in bloom from May to September!

Wildflower morphology is one of the most intriguing subjects of the macro photography practice, as no two types of wildflowers function in the exact same way. The shooting-star flowers within the Primula genus are certainly no exception.