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In an ecologically focused landscape, common evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) is an example of a native plant that offers habitat support at every stage of its lifecycle. Habitat is a term to describe the basic food, shelter, space, and nesting needs of an organism. When I mention the habitat value of a plant, I also take into consideration the light, air, water, and soil needs of the plant itself because it’s also an organism. The list of ways evening primrose supports habitat is lengthy.
As its name suggests, evening primrose starts blooming in the evening. A wide variety of pollinators such as hummingbirds, bumblebees, and butterflies visit the blooms before dark, and significant nocturnal pollinators such as sphynx moth also join in. The flowers close up in the morning, but later in the season you may see flowers on some plants open in the afternoon because once the plant reaches the point of setting enough seed (how does it know?!) the flowers will stay open throughout the day.
Evening primrose is a pollen source for both specialist and generalist native bees. Around 25-45% of native bees are specialist bees and exclusively use the pollen from specific plants to reproduce. Specialist bees don’t necessarily use rare plants and are more likely to use abundant plants which is why common plants like evening primrose deserve more attention. There are around eleven specialist bees that need evening primrose pollen, including the primrose sweat bee! Generalist bees such as bumblebees, who are not fussy about the plants they use, also collect evening primrose pollen to bring back to the nest.
According to the National Wildlife Federation site where you can punch in your zip code and find out the top host plants for moths and butterflies, in metro Atlanta evening primrose is number 12 and hosts 19 species of lepidoptera, including the white-lined sphinx and nessus sphinx. It also attracts the parasitic primrose moth caterpillars who eat the flowers and seeds but not the leaves. From a habitat supporting perspective we want to maximize the number of caterpillars we have in our yards because “caterpillars transfer more energy from plants to other animals than any other type of creature,” according to Doug Tallamy, the thought leader for restoring nature where we live.
A variety of insects eat the leaves of evening primrose including leafhoppers, aphids, and beetles. Some people consider evening primrose a trap plant for invasive Japanese and Asiatic garden beetles because they prefer evening primrose and it diverts their energy away from other nearby plants. Any leaf damage from insects is cosmetic and supports the biodiversity of the ecosystem.
The evening primrose is edible and sometimes small mammals eat the roots for nourishment.
The dried stems and seedheads of evening primrose continue to offer habitat in numerous ways. They are one of the most popular dried plants in my yard!
The minute seed pods form, American goldfinches descend on evening primrose! When I leave the stems up to naturally decompose throughout the year, I’ve had goldfinches picking at the seedheads from the previous year!
The hollow dried stems of evening primrose are used by ground nesting bees and other insects as a nesting site if they aren’t cut down. You can often see evidence of the food web in the dried evening primrose stems when woodpeckers and other insect eating birds peck hole up and down the stems to get to the insects in them!
I’ve noticed the evening primrose is a favorite perching spot for small birds like hummingbirds, finches, and Eastern phoebes. The tall, sturdy dried stems give birds a place to look above for predators and to rest a bit between foraging for food. They are one of the longest lasting dried stems – I’ve had stems still standing from two previous growing seasons!
Ways to use evening primrose
Evening primrose is an early succession plant that fills in to offer habitat for wildlife in recently disturbed sites until longer living perennials take its place. Evening primrose can function in the same way in new planting areas and will continue to self-seed where there is bare soil. In a somewhat tough sunny, dry area of my yard with poor soil evening primrose continues to thrive along with annuals like partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata) and grasses including little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and river oats (Chasmanthium latifolium).
Evening primroses is a biennial, meaning it completes its lifecycle in two years. The first year it forms a rosette of leaves and the second it shoots up tall 3–6 foot stalks, blooms, then dies. It self-seeds generously so unless or until other plants crowd it out, you will have plenty of evening primrose once one goes to seed. The seeds also stay in the seed bank for up to 70 years!
Evening primrose can be grown as a container plant. In my prairie inspired container garden how tall it gets is dependent on the size of the container it grows in. In small pots it might only grow a couple feet and in my largest container it’s well over 5 feet tall! Homegrown National Park lists evening primrose as a container-garden-friendly keystone species for the Southeastern USA Plains and other Eastern ecoregions. (The video below shows a goldfinch enjoying the seedhead of an evening primrose in my back deck container micro-prairie.
Where to Get Evening Primrose
Native plant nurseries often don’t sell evening primrose. Like most annuals and biennials, evening primrose is designed by nature to easily germinate so growing from seed is the way to go. I have had great success winter sowing evening primrose so I can give plants away to help populate the yards of Atlanta with this valuable habitat support plant. (If you’re in Atlanta and want an evening primrose plant, just message me in the fall or winter for one of the seedlings I winter sowed in January. They will bloom next summer) Most native plant seed sources have evening primrose seeds. It self-seeds so easily that if you have a native plant friend with evening primrose growing in their yard, they may be more than willing to help out if you can ask them if you can collect some seeds.
Evening primrose exemplifies the shift in priorities that needs to happen when gardening for nature because you’d think such a valuable native habitat plant would be wildly popular, but it’s not. Often, the function a plant offers an ecosystem takes a backseat to traditional gardening criteria such as how it looks and how easily it can be managed in a mulched flower bed. Even in native plant circles evening primrose is sometimes disparaged as “weedy” because of its “coarse” leaves and growing habit, or even how generously it self-seeds even though that is how it is designed to function in an ecosystem. The idea that native plants need to fit the aesthetic standards the 133-billion-dollar Lawn & Garden industry worldwide has set around cultivating ornamental exotics defeats the purpose of using native plants to create a welcoming habitat for wildlife filled with native plant communities. Ecologically focused landscapes are all about the life a plant supports and as Nancy Lawson of the Humane Gardener points out, evening primrose could easily be called the Moth Life Giver!
Whether a plant is attractive or not is subjective, but what a plant does in an ecosystem is objective. The functional beauty evening primrose brings to my small, urban, rewilded yard is undeniable when
hummingbirds visit the flowers when they open at dusk or in the early morning before they wilt
moths visit the flowers at night
the leaves are rolled up with moth caterpillars inside,
the leaves are ravaged by a host of insects
small bumblebees rest on the large, soft leaves at night
cardinals pick invasive Asian garden beetles off the leaves
small birds perch on the dried stems
the dried stems are dotted with woodpecker holes
goldfinches have a seed eating party on the dried stems
birds use old bits of broken-down stems on the ground for nesting material
(the following sweet video was generously shared by Lopa Patel in Atlanta of a bee busily getting nectar from an evening primrose. I winter sowed this plant last winter and gave her a small seedling this winter at one of my Habitat Yard workshops - and now it's well over 6 feet tall!)
Note: I profiled Oenothera biennis because I’ve observed it for years now and it is native to much of North America, There are almost 100 Oenothera species on BONAP (Biota of North America Program), including some invasive ones. Check out the site to see other Oenothera species that are native where you live!
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