Oenothera elataKunth

tall evening primrose

WFO wfo-0000389426 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Oenothera elata, photographed by James C. Davis
fig. a James C. Davis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-11-10 / obs. 168330045
Oenothera elata, photographed by Clay Gibbons
fig. b Clay Gibbons, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152550534
Oenothera elata, photographed by Marc Whitaker
fig. c Marc Whitaker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 163588185
Oenothera elata, photographed by Arvel Hernandez
fig. d Arvel Hernandez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 152951644
Oenothera elata, photographed by Jonathan Eisen
fig. e Jonathan Eisen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 151075654
Oenothera elata, photographed by Dominic Gentilcore
fig. f Dominic Gentilcore, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158067429
Oenothera elata, photographed by Tim Messick
fig. g Tim Messick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161123984

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 1,613 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 1,613 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 50 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Oenothera biennis f. hookeri (Torr. & A.Gray) B.Boivin
  • Oenothera biennis var. hirsutissima A.Gray ex S.Watson
  • Oenothera biennis var. hookeri (Torr. & A.Gray) B.Boivin
  • Oenothera communis var. hookeri (Torr. & A.Gray) H.Lév.
  • Oenothera corymbosa Sims
  • Oenothera elata subsp. texensis W.Dietr. & W.L.Wagner
  • Oenothera elata var. hirsutissima (A.Gray ex S.Watson) Cronquist
  • Oenothera franciscana Bartlett
  • Oenothera grisea (Bartlett) Rostański
  • Oenothera guttata (Greene ex R.R.Gates) R.R.Gates
  • Oenothera hewettii Cockerell
  • Oenothera hirsutissima (A.Gray ex S.Watson) de Vries
  • Oenothera hookeri Torr. & A.Gray
  • Oenothera hookeri subsp. angustifolia (R.R.Gates) Munz
  • Oenothera hookeri subsp. euhookeri Munz
  • Oenothera hookeri subsp. grisea (Bartlett) Munz
  • Oenothera hookeri subsp. hewettii Cockerell
  • Oenothera hookeri subsp. hirsutissima (A.Gray ex S.Watson) Munz
  • Oenothera hookeri subsp. montereyensis Munz
  • Oenothera hookeri subsp. ornata (A.Nelson) Munz
  • Oenothera hookeri subsp. venusta (Bartlett) Munz
  • Oenothera hookeri var. angustifolia R.R.Gates
  • Oenothera hookeri var. euhookeri Munz
  • Oenothera hookeri var. franciscana (Bartlett) R.R.Gates

and 26 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.