Not Prim and Not a Rose — It’s the Evening Primrose

Despite her name, the evening primrose, or Oenothera biennis, enjoys the light of the day where she thrives under a full sun. She also evolved to thrive in disturbed areas, and has no problem growing in dry, nutrient-thin soil. In nature perhaps those were places trampled by large animals or where soil is carved away by natural disaster. New York City, with its decimated topography and poor soil, is essentially a great place for the evening primrose to live and raise its young. They are just as happy growing in a crack in the sidewalk as they are in an upstate meadow.

A crack in the sidewalk is probably where you’ve seen this plant without knowing what you were looking at. You’ve probably trampled a few of them, and they were probably able to brush it off without taking it too personally because in their first year they are flat as a pancake to begin with, existing as a basal rosette, meaning a bunch of leaves emanating from a base. Imagine an agave plant, then imagine something that never happened in real life: a Brachiosaurus steps on it. That’s what an evening primrose basal rosette looks like, except much, much smaller — about the size of your palm.

Lots of plants start as basal rosettes, and the flattened basal rosette of an evening primrose belies how tall the plant can actually get. They lay low, staying somewhat evergreen through the winter, until the middle of their second and last growing season (biennis means two years). Then they seem to spring up by July, when they flower until October. Some of them reach eight feet. Now who’s gonna step on whom?

The evening primrose, by the way, bears no resemblance to a rose nor are they even related. At maturity they have a central stem that often starts branching at the top half of the plant. Emerging directly from the stem are bright green leaves that are pretty soft despite their dagger shape. Each branch has a flower head with multiple buds that cling to the stem.

You have probably seen the second-year plant lots of times. Not prim at all, it often takes a rangy form and might be hard for some to distinguish between goldenrods, marestail and other ragtag but determined and resilient characters that populate the scarred and abandoned corners of the neighborhood and provide sustenance to the fauna that make these places their home. Just wait until July, when the evening primrose starts to bloom and stick out from the crowd. Each butter yellow, buttercup-like flower lasts for a day, opening in the evening and then closing by noon the following day. Moths and other nighttime pollinators feed on its nectar. When stirred by a gentle breeze the flowers themselves float around like their principal pollinator. One moth in particular, the fuzzy pink evening primrose moth, relies on the evening primrose for its entire lifecycle. It lays its eggs on the plants’ leaves and the larvae feed on seeds.

After the blooms close they start to form capsules full of black seeds that mature as the season progresses. The seeds have reached maturity when the capsules turn desiccated and brown and often split open at the top on their own. If you pluck the capsules from the stems and pinch them, seeds come tumbling out.

If kept on the stem they become a buffet for wildlife. The nutrient-rich seeds are a great source of food for local birds to help them get through the winter months. Local foragers and members of the prepper community will find that the evening primrose is a gift that keeps on giving through all stages of its lifecycle. If you find yourself hankering for root vegetables, the taproot of a first-year evening primrose is exactly that. In their second year the leaves, especially during the earlier part of the growing season, can be used raw in salads or cooked like spinach. Finally, humans can use their seeds the same way many other seeds are used: in baked goods, in granola bars, to top salads and more.

But the evening primrose plants that liven up a rubble-strewn lot, or burst through cracks in the sidewalk or grow in areas unreachable to blades that would hack them down are growing in soil that is not just nutrient-bereft, but probably contaminated. What our bellies can’t feast on, our eyes, the birds and the pollinators can.