Oenothera berlandieri

I love Evening Primroses, though many are not particularly
good garden subjects.  The Mexican Evening Primorose, usually
called Oenothera berlandieri, seems to be thought by some
botanists to be a subspecies of O. speciosa, a variable
species native to Mexico and the southeast US as well.  There
are a variety of forms, pink to white, growing tall to short.
"Siskyou" is a shorter, more compact form which I also believe
was introduced by the mail order nursery of the same name.  It
has been very common in the trade here in the Calif. Bay Area
as people feel it is less 'thug-like'.  I find it grows poorly
and is prone to mildew, and the flowers are very pale in color.

The form I grow I found in a small pocket garden in Downtown
Berkeley, and I could never find any information about who planted
it or where the plant came from.  It is very vigorous and tall,
with larger, very deep pink flowers, made more intense by the
fact that there is almost no white zone at the petal base.  I
have it planted between a sidewalk and a two ft retaining wall,
where it doesn't invade other parts of the garden.  At one time,
I had the more typically nursery form in there as well, but it
eventually died out.  It always was covered with mildew by this time
of year, and the floweres were noticable paler and insipid in color
next to the deeper pink and more robust form.  Eventually, the
more robust form took over completely.

The flowers are in full force now, always soliciting comments from
people passing by.  A few other gardens in the neighborhood now have
this form in them as well, so the blaze of pink is becoming more
spread around.  For various reasons, my own garden has been very
neglected, and one half of this planting was full of weeds for part
of the spring.  Now weed-free, and receiving more heat, the Oenothera
is starting to come up again in that part as well.

Not for the shy, but certainly a handsome plant for difficult, hot and
dry spots.  It actaully prefers to grow along the enges of concrete
sidewalks - I've even seen it sprouting up between sidewalk cracks
with no water!

Sean O.

Sean A. O'Hara                       sean.ohara@poboxes.com
h o r t u l u s   a p t u s          710 Jean Street
'a garden suited to its purpose'     Oakland, CA 94610-1459, U.S.A.
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