88 NOTES. 



American plant, but is now found wild in several parts 

 of England, notably at Formby, among the Lancashire 

 sand hills, where tradition says it originally came from a 

 vessel wrecked on that barren coast. It is mentioned 

 little, if at all, by our old botanists, and our more modern 

 poets have for the most part passed it carelessly by. 

 Southey, however, alludes to it in his well-remembered 

 lines to the bee, that was still at work, after the Cistus 

 flowers had fallen and "the Primrose of Evening was 

 ready to burst." Keats, too, has a striking passage 

 about the Evening Primrose, which I quote a little 

 further on, for I may perhaps make a few extracts from an 

 article I lately wrote in the Pall Mall Gazette on " The 

 Garden at Nightfall," as I have no better words in which 

 to describe the beauty and charm of these CEnotheras. 

 The question arising from the veins of flowers I have 

 already mentioned in TheEnglish Flower Garden. 



" I have two varieties of GEnotheras or Evening Prim- 

 roses, and they are in their full glory to-night. One is 

 the large flowering yellow QEnothera, which grows from 

 five to six feet high, and which opens its yellow blossoms 

 night after night from early summer to late autumn. It 

 is a curious sight to see the blossoms begin to open. I 

 had been in the garden shortly after six, and the yellow 

 buds were still folded within the calyx. Watching 

 closely, you saw the petals give a sudden start they 

 half release themselves and by degrees open out fully 

 into the blossom, which will last till morning, but begins 

 to fade after the sun has dried up the dews of night. 



