EVENING PRIMROSE

EVENING PRIMROSE PLANTS GROWING AT THE BEACH...

... LEMON YELLOW FLOWERS

Friday, 8:30 AM.  68 degrees F at the ferry dock, 65 on the back porch.  Wind W with strong gusts.  The sky is clear with a few scattered clouds, the humidity 78%.  The weekend weather should be gorgeous, with temperatures in the mid to high 70's, and no rain until midweek.

   Evening primrose, Oenothera biennis, in the Evening Primrose Family (Onagraceae) is a biennial (thus the species name) that produces a rosette of leaves the first year of its growth, and a flower stalk the second year, after which it dies.  It has been blooming for the last two weeks or so.  The fragrant flowers are a lemon yellow, and the flowers of many of the species in the genus open in the evening, to be pollinated by night flying insects, thus the common name.  

   An English common name for this plant is "king's heal-all," which refers to the numerous medicinal qualities attributed to the genus (the genus name, applied by Linnaeus, has its roots in the Greek and Latin names of medicinal plants).  Many herbal medicinal claims for evening primrose have not been verified scientifically, but the oil of evening primrose seed is an antibiotic still used as an antidote for children's ear infections, and is also considered helpful for eczema and other skin conditions.
   The 145 species in the genus are all Western Hemisphere plants, the epicenter of the genus probably being Mexico, but the plants have been spread around the world in the last several centuries.
   Evening primroses are very complicated genetically, exhibiting all sorts of lethal genes and unusual chromosome combinations and hybridization contrary to Mendelian genetics, which have rendered them objects of study by geneticists, and there are a lot of horticultural hybrids of the plants, some with white or pink flowers.