Audubon At Home > Archives >
Wildlife Gardening
Creating a Wildscape
"Our backyards can be a treasure trove of nature’s beauty and Colorado Wildscapes shows how to create an environment that encourages wildlife to visit. For me, being able to sit in my backyard and sketch all of the visitors that buzz, flutter and fly by is delightful indeed!" (Susie Mottashed, Illustrator)
|
Featured Plant: White Stemless Evening Primrose
Oenothera caespitosa (Onagraceae, Evening Primrose family)
By Dave Sutherland, City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks
|
Photo © Natural Resources Conservation Service
|
This month's featured native perennial could become a showcase plant for your garden. Starting in mid May and continuing throughout the summer, its night-blooming flowers open in early evening. The huge, soft white flowers produce a delicious aroma and attract moths, especially the fast-flying sphinx moths that look like hummingbirds. The sphinx moths and evening primroses are locked in an age-old symbiotic cycle: the plant provides food, and the moth pollinates the plant in return.
It is a joy to watch the moths pollinate the flowers: the corolla tube is so long that even the long-tongued sphinx moths have to alight and crawl down into the narrow throat of the flower, until only their wingtips and abdomens remain visible. Coated with yellow pollen, the moths fly from flower to flower without realizing that they are making possible future generations of evening primroses.
Later in summer, White Lined Sphinx Moths return to the plants to lay their eggs. Look for the green hornworm caterpillars in June. Raising the caterpillars is a wonderful project for children, who must gently snip a few plant leaves each day to keep their fat green pets healthy. When the larvae are about as big as your pinky finger, they pupate by burrowing into the ground (if you are raising them in a jar, be sure to provide some soil at the bottom). The adult sphinx moths hatch after a few weeks to perpetuate the endless cycle.
|
Photo © Natural Resources Conservation Service
|
White Stemless Evening Primrose is available in some nurseries. It transplants fairly easily but may require water and some special care for several weeks after a move. Once established, however, this tough and hardy plant will thrive in the meanest, hottest, driest part of your garden. Deer will occasionally nibble at it, but not destroy it. This compact evening primrose will never grow larger than one foot tall and two feet across, so plant it near the front where you can enjoy it. It also reseeds itself, though not aggressively: just enough to give you transplants to share with your friends, who will all want some when they see it.
|
