Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Herbaceous, low-growing perennials, stems absent, herbage minutely strigose with glandular hairs, plants from fleshy taproots.

Leaves: Alternate, sessile, fleshy, in basal rosettes, oblanceolate to oblong in outline and irregularly pinnately lobed, 3-36 cm long.

Flowers: Yellow fading pale orange, large and showy with 4 notched petals with rounded lobes 10-38 mm long, sepals 10-34 mm long, the free tips in bud 1-5 mm long, hypanthium 24-150 mm long, flowers borne in axils.

Fruits: Narrowly ovate to elliptic, loculicidal capsules, 10-40 mm long and 4-7 mm wide, with wings 2-6 mm wide. Seeds obliquely wedge-shaped, 1-2.5 mm long, minutely beaded and narrow-winged distally and along 1 margin.

Ecology: Found on clay soils in drying depressions, damp flats, meadows, streambanks, and sagebrush scrub to pi-on/juniper woodland communities, from 2,500-9,000 ft (762-2743 m); flowering April-September.

Distribution: Occurring mainly in the western half of the United States, including Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah, also in Mexico.

Notes: This Oenothera has bright yellow flowers that fade pinkish, and leaves which are highly variable in shape. A handy key for this species is the length of the tips of the sepals in bud, they are 1-5 mm long in this species, and less than or to 1 mm long in O. deltoides.

Synonyms: None

Editor: LCrumbacher2012