Oenothera pallidaLindl.

pale evening primrose

WFO wfo-0001087546 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Oenothera pallida, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. a Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-03 / obs. 203842391

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.

Native range 17 botanical countries

Regions where Oenothera pallida is native: Arizona, British Columbia, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming ArizonaBritish ColumbiaColoradoIdahoKansasMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestNebraskaNevadaNew MexicoOklahomaOregonSouth DakotaTexasUtahWashingtonWyoming
Native distribution of Oenothera pallida, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
British Columbia BRC
Colorado COL
Idaho IDA
Kansas KAN
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Nebraska NEB
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
Oklahoma OKL
Oregon ORE
South Dakota SDA
Texas TEX
Utah UTA
Washington WAS
Wyoming WYO

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 430 in flower of 436 examined

Proportion of examined Oenothera pallida in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 1 too few examined
Mar 15 15 100% 80% to 100%
Apr 89 90 99% 94% to 100%
May 156 159 98% 95% to 99%
Jun 65 65 100% 94% to 100%
Jul 22 22 100% 85% to 100%
Aug 29 29 100% 88% to 100%
Sep 40 40 100% 91% to 100%
Oct 14 15 93% 70% to 99%
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Oenothera pallida observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 430 of 436 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 42 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.

  • Anogra cinerea Rydb.
  • Anogra gypsophila A.Heller
  • Anogra gypsophila (Eastw.) A.Heller
  • Anogra latifolia (Rydb.) Rydb.
  • Anogra leucotricha Wooton & Standl.
  • Anogra pallida (Lindl.) Britton
  • Anogra pallida var. brevifolia (Engelm.) Small
  • Anogra pallida var. latifolia (Rydb.) Small
  • Anogra pallida var. runcinata Small
  • Anogra rhizomata A.Nelson
  • Anogra runcinata (Engelm.) Wooton & Standl.
  • Anogra trichocalyx (Nutt.) Small
  • Anogra violacea A.Nelson
  • Anogra vreelandii Rydb.
  • Baumannia douglasiana Spach
  • Oenothera albicaulis var. brevifolia Engelm.
  • Oenothera albicaulis var. gypsophila Eastw.
  • Oenothera albicaulis var. pallida (Lindl.) H.Lév.
  • Oenothera albicaulis var. runcinata Engelm.
  • Oenothera albicaulis var. trichocalyx (Nutt.) Engelm.
  • Oenothera latifolia (Rydb.) Munz
  • Oenothera pallida subsp. gypsophila (Eastw.) Munz & W.M.Klein
  • Oenothera pallida var. idahoensis Munz
  • Oenothera pallida var. latifolia Rydb.

and 18 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.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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