Would like to know name of this flower

[lori51]

I was given a flower last year,, and the giver did not know the name of it. I have been searching online and cannot find it.

Plant description. It looks like a very skinny dandelion. Flower pods develop over a 2 day period, once large enough, this plant flowers at dusk and not before. You can actually watch it open. You hear a slight pop and the flower slowly comes out of the pod, like time lapse photography. The flower is a beautiful yellow 4 petal flower. It stays in bloom all night and in the morning the flower has wilted.

I do not know how to put pictures on this forum so I could show you the plant.

Any help finding a name for this flower would be appreciated. Also how do you reproduce the plant? I dead head it so that new flower pods will appear, should I let the spent flower develop a seed?

Lorraine

[Candida]

Sounds like an evening primrose to me. Hard to say without a picture. the only yellow flower that I personally know that opens quickly and in the evening is this one. Hope that helps. Maybe you can find a picture of this primrose and see if that is it.

[d3dude]

I think it is probably this Evening Primrose. I had a tough time finding it as well because I didn't know there were multiple varieties of Evening Primrose and all the ones I could find, while they had yellow flowers, looked different than mine. Hope this helps

[opabinia51]

Primroses tend to look almost like a low growing shrub with a compact group of leaves and flowers residing very close to the leaves. They come in various colours, though it sounds to me like the description above is of a flower with a long stem, am I correct Lorraine?

Do you have any pictures?

[lori51]

On another web site I have found out the name of the flower I was searching for. The name is Oenothera triloba of the ONAGRACEAE family here is a link to pictues of this plant. And yes it actually is a relative of the primrose family.. so you were all correct to a point.

http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/bio406d/image ... riloba.htm

Thank you all that have replied. Lorraine[/img]