I hate to be a pain...but a couple of my plant images were moved from Calylophus berlandieri to Oenothera berlandieri. I'm confused! When I googled the latter species, many site show pink primroses and refer to it as mexican primrose. Mine isn't pink and doesn't look similar.
This is the primrose plant I am growing:

Actually the closest I can find to that is this:
http://www.wildflower.org/gall...
Still a Calylophus berlandieri, but ssp. pinifolius.

Linda: I found this info at ITIS listing the common name as Calylophus and the accepted name as Oenothera:

http://www.itis.gov/servlet/Si...


So ... are they one and the same?

I just don't know, hence the confusion. Calylophus is not a common name, it is a genus name. The botanical people are always changing everything around, but usually if I google, I find some reference somewhere to the new genus name. Instead I saw a lot of references to a pink mexcian evening primrose with the name given as Oenothera berlandieri. Maybe they changed that to something else and then changed Calylophus genus to Oenothera. That's what I wanted to get straight. And seems like it would be useful, after the botanical authorities change a genus or species name, to list it in the plant database with the new name, then include the old name also. Because hardly anybody would be searching for info on a plant with a brand new botanical name not yet generally available to people.

Linda, C. berlandieri is now a synonym of Oenothera berlandieri. I'm proposing the addition of the synonym to that listing so that it will be accessible to someone using the search function.

Linda: I agree ... it makes for a lot of confusion when things get changed around!

Zuzu: Thanks for that database proposal!

Hi Linda,

Calylophus is no longer an accepted genus by plant taxonomists. For what it is worth, the species in this genus were all originally classified under Oenothera before being split out into Calylophus, sometime in the 70's I believe. They were recently lumped back into Oenothera (plants from the genus Gaura were lumped into Oenothera as well).

The real problem in this case is that nurseries often sell cultivars of Oenothera speciosa under the name Oenothera berlandieri. It is likely that somebody just made a mistake with the name when these plants were first released and it has been perpetuated over time. That happens quite commonly in the horticultural world. However, Oenothera speciosa has a well-deserved reputation for being an aggressive garden plant. Renaming plants with bad reputations, as a marketing strategy, is also fairly common in the horticultural world.

So what is Linda's beautiful plant?

Oenothera berlandieri. Hard to say which subspecies without more information than can be gotten from a picture.

Well, the plant taxonomists and the nursery people together sure do manage to confuse people! But I've seen Asclepias curassavica being sold as Asclepias tuberosa in Texas...and that is purely deception by the nursery trade. Telling the local nursery personnel that what they're selling is not Asclepias tuberosa doesn't usually do any good. Asclepias tuberosa is repeated recommended to people on lists people see here and there in Texas. Yet I've never seen that species sold in one single plant nurseries I"ve visited. Just Asclepias curassavica, which is easy to grow and widely available.

I found these yellow varieties. http://www.sunnyborder.com/pla...
I see your yellow blooms have a small dark center.

That site has two cultivars of Oenothera speciosa incorrectly listed as Oenothera berlandieri and one, Oenothera missiouriensis with an obsolete name. The other two appear to be correct. Two out of five is not that bad really.

Wow, no wonder we can get so confused.

To repeat what I mentioned on another thread. Does this sort of confusion perhaps make including the Family name in the database somewhat useful? Not that I'm pushing for that. Just wondering what others think.