Pale Four-o'clock (Mirabilis albida)

   

Overview, Davis Mountains, TX. Photograph by Wynn Anderson.

 

Vegetation and flowers. Photographs by Wynn Anderson.

• Common English Names: Pale Four-o'clock
• Common Spanish Names: None known
• Scientific Name: Mirabilis albida (mere-RAB-ill-iss AL-bih-duh
• Family: Nyctaginaceae (Four-o'clock Family)
• Geographic Range: Widespread; most of North America from Canada and eastern, central, and southwestern United States, from California to Texas into northern Mexico.
• Description: A highly variable perennial species with small white, pink, or red-violet flowers enclosed in widely opening bell-shaped involucres, expanding and enlarging umbrella-like in seed. Leaves are linear-lanceolate to lance-ovate, ovate or deltate, glabrous to puberulent, viscid to villous, green to gray-green on color.
• Notes: With a few notable exceptions, the genus Mirabilis is notoriously confused as many putative species freely intergrade upon contact between supposedly differing populations, confusing distinguishing characteristics and often rendering key distinctions unreliable. Following Richard Spellenberg's efforts in The Flora of North America to bring some order, the following taxa previously identified from within the Chihuahuan Desert region, M. oblongifolia, M. rotata, M. pseudaggrregata, M. pumila, M. hirsuta, as well as M. comata, and others outside the region, are treated here as synonyms of A. albida.

Last Update: 1 Oct 2013