Oenothera versicolor - Red Evening Primrose

Oenothera versicolor is the wild ancestor of the famous 'Sunset Boulevard' evening primrose, the star of sunny beds that is much more commonly seen in cultivation and in catalogues. Slightly less colourful than the latter, it still offers an equally generous flowering but in a delightful range of orange shades, a colour that is not so common in the garden. Very hardy, fearless and very modest, this evening primrose does not live for very long but ensures its perenniality by spontaneously reseeding here and there.

Oenothera versicolor belongs to the Onagraceae family and is native to North America. It is a herbaceous plant with a taproot, a very fast growth rate, and a lifespan that rarely exceeds 3 years. It first forms a rosette of basal leaves from which upright and vertical stems, 60cm (24in) tall, rise, with a burgundy red colour, woody at the base, bearing long and narrow leaves, coarsely toothed, of a beautiful shiny dark green. Flowering occurs continuously from June to September. The cup-shaped flowers appear solitarily in the axil of each leaf as the stem elongates. They only live for one day but renew themselves every day. Their colour evolves from light apricot to dark apricot, and they emit a very pleasant light fragrance at the end of the day. This plant, of great generosity, sometimes exhausts itself by flowering, and the stump dies prematurely if it has not had time to produce a new rosette of leaves at the base.

The versicolor evening primrose is planted in beds or in a sunny scree garden, in well-drained soil. Its orange flowers combine well with all blue, white, yellow, or even fuchsia pink blooms. To accompany it, think, for example, of Nigellas, perennial flax, Buenos Aires verbena, shrubby salvias, Catananches... Its association with small grasses (Stipa tenuifolia, Carex comans...), the grey foliage of Artemisias, and warm-toned wallflowers is also very successful. We have planted it in a scree garden with sages and the blue-leaved Mertensia simplissicima: guaranteed contrast!