When do Primrose Flower, and other sorted details…

By David Bates

When you make a nocturnal notation of floriferous fancy, does your mental scribing list fragrant flowers flower beds?  (If you understand that question, see your doctor.) If by chance you have missed the Evening Primrose, you have missed one of the treasures of garden and decor.  It does not require purchasing flower landscape software to find uses for primroses, although, you might want to make special allowances for such exotic looking wild flower garden designs.

The Evening Primrose is actually not a primrose at all.  Being neither prim nor a rose.  The Evening Primrose (Oenothera biennis), is made up of about fifty species. Some of the evening primrose species open in the late afternoon, as their name implies, and then they close the next morning. This floral insomniac enjoys moonlight, starlight, neon light, even streetlights - but like a musician it reviles the sunlight, in which it wilts.

Each flower of the evening primrose can vary in size from one to two inches in diameter combined with wavy-toothed leaves that grow alternately along the stems. Evening primrose can grow in height from one to two feet and bloom from June through October.

Flowers play many tricks to secure visits from specific insects. Many different flowers open and close at different times of day…and night. The daisy gets its name, day's eye, because it opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, while the evening primrose open their flowers just as the daisies are closing.

Primroses have dimorphic flowers--that is, some plants within a species have flowers with long pistils (the female structures) and short stamens (male structures), whereas others have flowers with short pistils and long stamens. This arrangement increases the likelihood of cross-pollination because each kind of insect pollinator tends to enter a flower in the same way and to the same depth each time, thus carrying pollen from the long stamen of one flower to the long pistil of another, or from short stamen to short pistil, rather than from long to short or short to long within the same flower.

 

If you go near a bed of evening primroses just when the sun is setting, they will then give out a sweet scent that leaves no doubt they are calling the evening moths to come and visit them. The daisy opens by day, because it is visited by day insects, but those particular moths which can carry the pollen of the evening primrose, fly only by night, and if this flower opened by day other insects might not pollinate as well, they might not be the right size or shape to touch its pollen supply and carry the genetic dust.

A considerable claim by certain health research people has been made on behalf of this plant with its little yellow flowers. The plant has been linked to a family of hormone-like substances known as prostaglandins. There are claims that prostaglandins once within the human system can help people with such diverse ailments as: "high blood pressure, ulcers, asthma, allergies, migraine headaches, arthritis, glaucoma, menstrual cramps and possibly some types of cancer." In the 1930s, a Dr. Goldblatt in England and Dr. Euler in Sweden independently identified prostaglandins. Euler named it on the basis that high concentrations were found in the prostrate gland. Prostaglandins, so we are told, is part of the larger picture which science is only just coming to grips with; that is, that certain essential substances are needed by cells if they are to function properly. Prostaglandins is one of these substances generally known as "essential fatty acids," EFA. Further, we are told, that EFA is not something that can be made up within the body, but rather must be taken in through a person's diet.

In parts of the U.S., evening primrose is known as “Nicodemus flower." A Sunday school group in Knoxville, Tennessee, gatheres at a home to watch the blooming. The Nicodemus flower has special meaning… It was named for Nicodemus in the Bible. Nicodemus only met with Jesus at night.”

Primrose is the common name for the at least 400 species of mostly perennial herbs constituting the genus Primula. Most primroses are native to Europe, Asia, and North America, and in the wild they are often found in hilly areas. Primroses grow best in shady sites having a deep, moist, loamy soil. They die back each winter but renew themselves from buds on the rootstock each spring.

This genus contains a large number of common perennial garden flowers, generally about 1 to 4 ft tall, with showy clusters of trumpet-shaped flowers of yellow, white, pink, blue, red, or purple born at the top of a long stem.  This makes them excellent cut flower perennials. The leaves are mostly at ground level and may be wrinkled or smooth in texture. Primrose seed may not reproduce parental characteristics. It is not unusual for many varieties of true primrose to be obtained by divisions from the root crowns.

Whether you want an early flowering, cold weather plant, a many-colored flowering specimen, or a mid-summer’s night dream, there is a primrose that is just right for you. 

So get out in the garden, do spring cleaning yard and flower planting, build a flower box, get yourself some garden pond material.  Please just don’t sit there in your heavyduty lawn chairs.  Get up off your duff and enjoy these beautiful primrose garden treasures!