Following from my last post about the need for a color infusion into the late summer garden, my mind was going back to the bordering-on-neon flowers that my mother used to grow. She always kept a small patch for favorite wildflowers, among them tall yellow-blooming evening primrose Oenothera sp. I started doing a little on-line research about evening primrose and learned that most available are short biennials grown from seed. That's not what I was looking for!
So I was delighted the next day to literally stumble across the tall variety lining the trail through the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord. Oh, the unexpected joy of serendipity!
The banks were thick with evening primrose. I'm still confused about their habitat: my mother would grow them in partial shade and on-line accounts indicate a preference for drier soils; these however were flourishing in exposed wetlands. More research is in order. And, eventually, perhaps, a supplier of plants as well as seeds. (Our rabbits are enjoying anything grown from seed way too much these days.)
So I was delighted the next day to literally stumble across the tall variety lining the trail through the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord. Oh, the unexpected joy of serendipity!
The banks were thick with evening primrose. I'm still confused about their habitat: my mother would grow them in partial shade and on-line accounts indicate a preference for drier soils; these however were flourishing in exposed wetlands. More research is in order. And, eventually, perhaps, a supplier of plants as well as seeds. (Our rabbits are enjoying anything grown from seed way too much these days.)
Even if I never figure out how to grow them in my own yard, I'll know where to go to find them in the wild.
2 comments:
Lovely pond in the middle of a field. Che bella.
Lovely pond in the middle of the field. Che bella.
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