Wild Four O'clock, Heart-leaved Umbrellawort, Mirabilis nyctaginea, Native Minnesota Wildflower plant, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

	Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
	Common Name	Scientific Name	Plant Family	Garden Location	Prime Season
	Heart-leaved Four-o'clock	Mirabilis nyctaginea (Michx.) MacMill.	Four-o'clock (Nyctaginaceae)	Upland	Early Summer
Other names and notes	(Heart-leaved Umbrellawort, Wild Four-o'clock). Flowers are tubular, pink to purple above a star shaped cup which enlarges after flowering. The flowers are in clusters. Stems are 1 to 3 feet high with opposite entire (no teeth) heart shaped leaves. The plant has undergone several botanical classifications over the years. In Eloise Butler's time the name used was Oxybaphus nyctagineus; In Martha Crone's era the name used was Allionia nyctaginea.


The cup behind the flower not yet enlarged.	Distinctive Leaves. Flowers on June 22.	The enlarged cup 2 weeks after flowering

Notes: This plant is indigenous to the Garden area. Eloise Butler catalogued it in her index file of plants in the early Garden. She also planted it in June 1910 with plants obtained in Minneapolis at Clinton Ave and 27th St. and again on Aug. 8, 1912 with plants from Glenwood Springs. This plant was listed on Martha Crone's 1951 inventory of plants in the Garden at that time. It is native to Minnesota except for a few scattered counties, most of which are in the far north of the state.

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References: Plant characteristics are generally from sources 15, 16, 30, 31, 33, W2 & W3. Distribution principally from W2 and also 31, 34 and W1. Planting history generally from 1, 4 & 4a. Other sources by specific reference. See Reference List for details.

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