White Evening Primrose

Weather: March winds and June temperatures; the end of afternoon clouds marked the beginning of what is usually an early summer drought; last useful precipitation 4/9/12; 13:47 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming in the area: Wild pink, Austrian Copper, Persian yellow, Dr. Huey and other hybrid roses, snowball, silver lace vine, bearded iris, muscular yuccas, red hot poker, peony, datura, donkey tail spurge, blue perennial salvia; buds on pyracantha.

Beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, fernleaf globemallow, western stickseed, bractless and tawny cryptanthas, alfilerillo, hoary cress, purple and tansy mustards, purple mat flower, gypsum phacelia, tufted white evening primrose, antelope horns, blue gilia, running sand verbena, bindweed, oxalis, flea bane, goat’s beard, common and native dandelion; needle, rice, June and cheat grasses; buds on cream tips, three awn grass.

In my yard: Black locust, spirea, beauty bush, skunk bush, tulip, baby blue iris, Bath pinks, snow-in-summer, small leaved soapwort, coral bells, vinca, yellow alyssum, blue flax, pink evening primrose; buds on floribunda roses, privet, Jupiter’s beard, sea pink, golden spur columbine; squash seeds up.

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum, petunia.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, goldfinches, hummingbird, geckos, hornets, harvester and small black ants.

Ants have been taking Siberian elm seeds back to their hills. I’m not sure which is worse, the botanical problem or the zoological cure.

Weekly update: This has been a most peculiar spring. After a prolonged drought with severe winters, the year started out as one of recovery - good snow in December with more in February and tolerably low temperatures.

Then came March. The winds didn’t seem unusual in the beginning, but by the end of the month there’d been several bursts of unusually high ones with afternoon temperatures jumping from the mid 50's at the beginning to the mid 70's by the end. Then, no more rain. Weather watchers were proclaiming it the driest, hottest month in recorded history (which isn’t more than about a hundred years).

Unlike modern Cassandras who live in darkened rooms where the only information on climate comes from television, plants take their cues from so many sources it’s hard to know what’s motivating them. Take the large flowered white evening primroses, which are blooming in my yard for the first time since 2008.

At first, I assumed they had returned because of the extended warm growing season with wet soil and moisture in the winds, but my memories get a bit confused. As near as I can tell there are two species that grow around here, the ones blooming now with large flowers on low plants


and ones that bloom later in the season with small flowers on taller plants.

The one with abutting petals is probably the tufted species, Oenothera caespitosa. The one with petals separated into crosses is likely the prairie evening primrose, Oenothera albicaulis.

The small flowered annual is relatively common, especially later in the season when it grows in what seem the same places outside the fences along the orchard road. The perennial large flowered species seems to only appear this time of year and is more sporadic. The greatest florescence occurred some years ago when I was still commuting to Los Alamos and one field where cattle were grazing was filled with glowing white early in the morning.

When I didn’t see them again, I assumed the animals had eaten or trampled them before they had produced seeds. When they stopped appearing in my yard with any predictability, I blamed the primrose beetle invasion of 2003.

Then I drove to Albuquerque Saturday where I saw the four petaled flowers scattered along the west side of the road and in the median in the San Domingo area. They weren’t prolific, but they were there.

My curiosity was piqued. I drove the road to Los Alamos earlier this week to see if they were back there like they were here. The area of relatively flat Santa Clara lands between the road and the river was filled with white. The ravines were empty and the area further south where I remembered them from the past had few.


When I went back to my notes, such as they were then, all I found for 2001 was: “4/30 bloom beyond fence, bloom SI and SC.” I made no notes the next year. In 2003 all I wrote was “6/9 not see on way to work.” In 2004 I was equally cryptic, “5/15 some blooming along SL roadside, not see any yet in fields.”

I know SI refers to the San Ildefonso section of the road to Los Alamos from Española and SC to Santa Clara domain, but SL is a mystery. It’s always hard to record the absence of something, which is what I was trying to do.

I have no idea what the weather was like in 2001. It’s hard to describe the actual weather a month ago - it's more than the recorded temperatures and wind speeds. But one thing I realized is 2001 was the year after the Cerro Grande fire, and this is the first season after the Las Conchas and other fires.

Fire can affect seeds in a number of ways. Heat, smoke or chemicals can stratify long dormant seeds, but which is hard to know. Nurseries use sulfuric acid when they need to duplicate the effects of smoke.

When I was trying to learn what was in the smoke last summer, the laboratory was more concerned with telling us what wasn’t there. If I went beyond its published test results to discover the constituents of smoke in general the available information was too contradictory to help.

While smoke may be important, it’s been many months since the worst passed and ten years is a long period for seeds to survive in the soil. Potted plants are sold by some native plant nurseries who probably don’t treat the seed. Something else must have contributed to outbrust of color.

Winds can carry warmed or water soddened seeds that have been dislodged from the ground by the fire’s own wind currents or those of aerial fire fighting equipment. When I look at the general distribution of the current flowers, they spread out in a narrow area north of the Black Mesa on both sides of the river, that is, the Santa Clara land on the west, and my yard and the prairie to the south on the east side of the Río Grande along with the scattered area some miles south of last year’s Cochiti fire corridor.

The Cerro Grande fire didn’t move as far north as the Las Conchas one, and the flowers in 2001, if my memory set by the presence of those cattle is correct, were close to the path of that fire which was successfully contained before it reached far into Santa Clara land.

If fire, wind and smoke are the reason for the many flowers this year, then I probably won’t see them like this again - much of the available fuel was consumed last year. But, if they are the product of the unusual growing season, I may never see them again, or they could become a standard feature of late spring. The future is impossible to know, and its historic sources difficult to reconstruct, even when you’ve lived through them.


Photographs:
1. Large flowered tufted white evening primrose with western stickseed in my yard the last time they appeared, 17 May 2008.

2. Tufted white evening primrose, Santa Clara land, 2 May 2012.

3. Small flowered prairie white evening primroses on a neighbor’s land, 3 August 2008.

4. Tufted white evening primroses on Santa Clara land, 3 May 2012; the line of brighter colored trees marks the Río Grande; the Sangre de Cristo rise in the distance.

5. Tufted white evening primroses on Santa Clara land with cholla cacti, 3 May 2012.

Evening Primroses

What’s blooming in the area: Apache plume, Illinois bundle flower, lance-leaf yellow brush, datura, buffalo gourd, stickleaf, white evening primrose, velvetweed, horseweed, white sweet clover, golden hairy aster, goldenrod, bigleaf globeflower, purple mat, bindweed, rose of Sharon, purple phlox, roses, sweet pea, faded bouncing Bess, heavenly blue morning glory, cardinal climber, pink evening primrose, trumpet creeper, silverlace vine, native and farmer’s sunflowers, pumpkins and beans. Hay cut in one field near orchards.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Black eyed Susan, blanket flower, golden spur columbine, lance-leaf coreopsis, chocolate flowers, perky Sue, Hartweg evening primrose, fern-leaf yarrow, Mexican hat, yellow cosmos, creeping zinnia.

Looking east: Yellow evening primrose, garlic chives, California poppy, winecup peaked, floribunda (Fashion), small and large flowered soapworts peaked, pink bachelor button, coral beardtongue, hollyhock, Shirley poppy, sweet alyssum.

Look south: Zinnia, crimson rambler morning glory, sensation cosmos, blaze, rugosa and rugosa hybrid (Elisio); red hips visible on rugosa rose.

Look west: Perennial four o’clock, purple coneflower, white phlox (David), white spurge, frikarti aster, lead plant, catmint, blue flax, sea lavender, Russian sage, purple ice plant, caryopteris.

Bedding plants: Dalhburg daisies, marigolds, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunias, profusion zinnia.

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds, bees, ants, worm, grasshoppers on Russian sage, small snake near eastern bed. Quail crossed road with 20 young. Gopher killed a hollyhock and tomato.

Weather: Solid rain last night and this morning; gentle rain the night before as Chris dissipated in Caribbean. Earlier, the usual hot days, cloudy afternoons, cool nights, and no useful rain.

Weekly update: Evening primroses flourish this year. The tall yellow biennials are everywhere, the white cluster by the roadside, and solitary pink cultivars unfold in village gardens. In addition, velvetweed has established large colonies, and a willow leaved gaura sprouted at the road by my drive.

I haven’t driven along the other side of the river at the right time of day to see if the Hartweg and white primroses are blooming there as well. Calylophos hartwegii usually sprawl for a short stretch along the road through Santa Clara land.

It’s easy to ascribe their triumph to cool weather, but that doesn’t explain much with biennials. They had to have had their good season several years ago; I just removed unwanted plants that started growing before this year’s plants bloomed, and so must be last year’s offspring. This year’s flowers are from plants that grew between the grasshoppers of last summer and the invasion of Japanese beetles in 2003.

Botanists would tell us survival of the genes under extraordinary circumstances is a defining characteristic of the plant family Onagraceae. In 1929 Johansen theorized from chromosome counts that the family originated when two species crossbred and produced a fertile offspring that could breed with either of its parents. This created two related, but separate strains, the one tied back to the mother, the other to the father.

This is all posited to have occurred in the area of today’s intermontane southwestern deserts during the Eocene when the Rockies were first being formed and grasses were evolving some 34 to 54 million years ago. From there, Katinas, et alia, have traced the gauras, calylophus and oenothera eastward.

The primroses (oenothera) are the fifth descendant on the dominant side. Gaura emerged three stages later. And, they’re still propagating: Gaura neomexicana coloradoensis was first reported in 1895 around Fort Collins. A hundred years later, the population is still small enough to count in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming.

For nearsighted people like me who only see external characteristics, yellow evening primroses (Oenothera biennis) have flowers with four large petals on tall, rangy plants that can be recognized from the road. Less obvious from a distance, the four sepals curve downward and the eight anthers protrude. The sepals of the Hartwegs merely point away from the flower, but otherwise look the same.

Velvetweeds (Gaura mollis) have smaller flowers that advertise themselves by catching morning light a foot above their leaves. It’s necessary to stop to see the tiny white petals clasped by pink sepals which survive after the petals have fallen. The anthers are as obvious.

Insects apparently don’t have the same problems recognizing them, but the sepal embracement of the petals creates a funnel that hides the nectar from all but the most specialized pollinators like moths, hummingbirds and some bees. I never see any insects or birds near my flowers; in the early morning the bees are at the catmint and caryopteris.

Velvetweed has compensated for the difficulty of attracting insects by developing rhizomatous roots. It may have been forming colonies for years underground, unnoticed until conditions favored their fluorescence this summer.

The white primroses are itinerant. When they appear, and they don’t emerge every year, they may be 50' or a 100' from their ancestors. Several years ago, they shimmered above a field near San Ildefonso for about a week. I don’t know if drought prevented them from reappearing or hungry cattle.

My natives remain short, with serrated leaves and no more than two flowers at a time that curve into shallow cups. The ones along the road grow about a foot and have a number of flowers with petals that lay flat like a cross and sepals that fuse at the tips. Mine, with their reddish stems, usually begin blooming in May and are gone by 7am. The ones by the road with their whitish stalks open this time of year and last until mid-morning.

Perennial pink primroses (Oenothera speciosa) reseed within a few feet of their parents, usually nearer the walk where there’s more water, but so far they have not naturalized. The ones that edged a drive in the village did not recover from the Japanese beetles.

The fickelness of the onagraceae clan is one feature that makes them interesting to grow, or rather watch, since they disdain domestication. Only Gaura lindheimeri is currently attracting nurserymen like Baldassare Mineo and time will tell if anything he produces survives as well as the little white primroses that migrate every year.

Notes:
Johansen, Donald A. "A Proposed Phylogeny of the Onagraceae Based Primarily on Number of Chromosomes," Proceedings, National Academy of Science 15:882-885:1929.

Katinas, Liliana, Jorge V. Crisci, Warren L. Wagner and Peter C. Hoch. "Geographical Diversification of Tribes Epilobieae, Gongylcarpeae, and Onagreae (Onagraceae) in North America, Based on Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity and Track Compatibilty Analysis," Annals, Missouri Botanical Gardens 91:159-185:2004.

United States, Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. "Proposed Threatened Status for the Plant Gaura Neomexicana ssp Coloradoensis," Federal Register 68 (56):14060-14065:24 March 1998.