WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

Spreading, sprawling, sparsely hairy, and white to pink stems up to 2-feet long form rounded 1-foot tall mounds covered with numerous white flowers. Note the flower’s style, is tipped with cross-shaped lobes and extends beyond the anthers, the mature red-striped buds nod, end in a sharp point, and the mouth of the floral tube is hairless (use lens).

FLOWERS: April–May. The 1 1/2–3-inch wide (38–76 mm) flowers have 4 heart-shaped petals and bloom in the axils of the upper leaves. The floral tube, 5/8–1 1/8-inches long (15–30 cm), has no hair in the mouth; stamens equal, the style has 4 cross-shaped lobes that extend beyond the 8 anthers; 4 sepals beneath the flower, 1/2–1-inch long (12–25 mm), slightly hairy, lance-shaped to linear with red margins, bent abruptly backward against the stem. The torpedo-shaped buds droop until opening and have distinct red stripes, and tips fully united into a point (not spreading). Flowers open in the evening and remain open several days, then fade to pink. Fruit a narrow cylindrical capsule to 1 1/2-inch long (4 cm).

LEAVES: Basal rosette with lance- to spoon-shaped leaves with long stems (petioles). Alternate stem leaves sessile (stemless); blades stiff, hairy, lance-shaped, 1/2–4-inches long (1.2–10 cm); margins wavy to deeply lobed along the midrib. 

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly, clay soils, sandhills, roadsides, disturbed areas; desert grassland, pinyon-juniper, ponderosa woodlands.

ELEVATION: 4,000–8,000 feet.

RANGE: Widespread at mid-elevations: TX and AZ north to MT and SD.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 35 species of Oenothera in NM, some restricted to one or a few counties, with 7 white evening primrose species. Another white species, Crownleaf Evening Primrose, O. coronopifolia, has a hairy throat. The sprawling Tufted Evening Primrose, O. caespitosa, has erect buds and flowers with a hairy throat. Pale Evening Primrose, O. pallida, nearly statewide, has bushy, arching stems to 16-inches tall, nodding red buds with spreading tips, and white flowers with a hairless, yellow-greenish throat. Engelmann’s Evening Primrose, O. engelmannii, in southern and eastern NM, is densely hairy with woolly-hairy, nodding buds.

NM COUNTIES: Statewide, except De Baca and Lea counties, in low- to mid-elevation, dry habitats.