Northern Evening Primrose
Oenothera parviflora
Flowers are in an elongat spike at the top of the stem, dense with leafy bracts and open from bottom to top. Flowers are stalkless but a narrowed neck between the ovary, nestled in the leaf axil, and the base of the sepals can be over an inch long giving the appearance of a flower stalk. Flowers are ¾ to 1½ inch across with 4 yellow heart-shaped petals and 8 yellow stamens with elongated tips (anthers) around a bright yellow cross-like stigma in the center.
The 4 sepals are light green, narrow lance shaped and hang tightly down below the open
petals, often in two pairs still attached along one seam.
Leaves are lance-like with small, shallow teeth or toothless, bright to gray-green with red or white veins. Basal leaves are stalked and wither away by flowering time (deciduous), 3 to 10 inches long and 1 to 1½ inches wide. Stem leaves have little to no stalk, 1½ to 7 inches long, the surfaces smooth or with scattered short hairs.
Stems are mostly unbranched to sparsely branched, often reddish with sparse, short hairs or mixed short and long hairs, some glandular tipped.