Spreading Four-o'clock (Mirabilis oxybaphoides)

   

Overview of Spreading Four o'clock, near Mayhill, Sacramento Mountains, Otero Co., NM. Photograph by Wynn Anderson.

 

Foliage and flowers, near Mayhill, Sacramento Mountains, Otero Co., NM. Photographs by Wynn Anderson.

• Common English Names: Spreading Four-o'clock
• Common Spanish Names: None Known
• Scientific Name: Mirabilis oxybaphoides (mere-RAB-ill-iss ox-ee-buh-PHOID-ees
• Family: Nyctaginaceae (Four-o'clock Family)
• Geographic Range: In brush, among boulders, on dry woodland banks or hillsides in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Oklahoma south through Arizona, New Mexico, to western Texas and Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo León in Mexico.
• Description: Herbaceous perennial, weak stemmed decumbent to prostrate and sprawling among nearby vegetation. Leaves are broadly deltate to ovate, fleshy and often sticky glandular. Flowers purplish to pale pink or rarely white, three in solitary or terminally clustered involucres in loose, narrow cymes, involucres only slightly enlarging in fruit.

Last Update: 1 Oct 2013