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Missouri Evening Primrose

Oenothera macrocarpa

Missouri evening primrose sprawls flat on the ground and opens flowers four inches across — enormous for a plant this size — that unfurl visibly over a few minutes at dusk, pale lemon and papery, and fade by the following afternoon. Hawkmoths do the pollinating on the night shift, and the flowers are pale and heavily scented for exactly that reason. What follows is as good as the bloom: a large four-winged seedpod that dries to papery tan and holds through winter. It is built for hot limestone and gravel, with a deep taproot, and it will rot in a rich or irrigated bed faster than almost anything else in the catalog. It is a larval host for sphinx moths, whose caterpillars feed on the foliage the adults pollinate above. Leave it undisturbed, since the taproot makes it effectively unmovable after the first year.

Family

Onagraceae

Type

wildflower

Lifespan

perennial

Height

0.75–1 ft

Spacing

1–1.5 ft apart

Light

sun

Soil moisture

dry

Soil pH

alkaline

Bloom

April, May, June, July, August

Bloom colors

yellow

Wildlife value

hummingbirds, pollinators, larval host

Caterpillar hosts

~16 butterfly & moth species

Landscape uses

border, groundcover, container, erosion control, naturalizing

Native states

AR, IL, KS, MO, NE, OK, TN, TX, UT