This family, the Nyctaginaceae, takes me back to a particular period of my life when I lived in a little house that came with a little landscaping. Included in that landscaping was a bougainvillea growing on the side of the house in a flower bed that was also full of four o'clock flowers. Both plants belong to this family.
Bougainvillea is a genus from tropical America, named after the explorer Bougainville, who circumnavigated the globe with the botanist Commerson, who did the naming. What I will always remember about this plant is that, more than any other in memory, it benefited from my adding coffee grounds to the soil. Evidently the pH was off and the coffee grounds increased the soil's acidity enough to meet the bougainvillea's needs.
Four o'clock flower -- Mirabilis jalapa -- also comes from tropical America. It has an overall pleasing structure that is very similar to tobacco plants. Are they related? According to Davis Wiki yes, because the Nyctaginaceae IS the tobacco family. Whereas according to Wikipedia the Nicotiana genus, from which all tobacco comes, is part of the Solanaceae family. I need someone to clear this up for me, because further research is thus far getting me nowhere.
Four o'clock flowers get their name from the behavior of opening in the late afternoon and closing by morning. They self-propagate easily by spreading an abundance of seeds. Not only do the trumpet-shaped flowers come in different colors, but some varieties have multiple colors, and some even change colors over the course of their lifetime.
Four o'clock flowers get their name from the behavior of opening in the late afternoon and closing by morning. They self-propagate easily by spreading an abundance of seeds. Not only do the trumpet-shaped flowers come in different colors, but some varieties have multiple colors, and some even change colors over the course of their lifetime.
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