Designed and drawn by Dan Nickrent, the Plant Biology logo depicts French's Shooting Star - Dodecatheon frenchii (Vasey) Rydb. This plant is found only on overhanging sandstone cliffs in six counties of southern Illinois (Jackson, Williamson, Saline, Union, Johnson, and Pope) as well as Carter Co. Kentucky, Newton Co. Arkansas, and Crawford Co. Indiana.

Although the most recent edition of Gleason and Cronquist (1991) considered this taxon to be a variety of the more common shooting star (D. meadia var. frenchii), Mohlenbrock (1978; Illustrated Flora of Illinois, Flowering Plants, Hollies to Loasas, pp. 144-147) gives evidence that this is indeed a distinct species. Dodecatheon meadia is a tetraploid (n=44) and D. frenchii is a diploid (n=22). As stated by Olah and DeFilipps (1968) "the cytological, morphological, and ecological differences, as well as the genetic barrier existing between the two taxa, indicate that French's shooting star is a distinct species."

Given its beauty and near restriction to southern Illinois, we feel this plant is an appropriate choice for our departmental logo.

• JPEG file (104 KB)

For printing posters, etc., high-resolution Adobe PhotoShop files are provided below. The first file has a white background, the second clear background (layers). NOTE: you need to right click these files and save them to your hard drive.

• White corners (4.7 MB)
• Clear corners (4.7 MB)