TTIE EVENING PRIMROSE. 
81 
THE EVENING PRIMROSE. 
OENOTHERA. BIENNIS. 
“ Flower of eve, I love to view thee, 
While thy dewy petals spread, 
Tearfully my looks pursue thee, 
As thou rear’st thy golden head. 
Sleep may rest on other eyes, 
Ours shall commune with the skies.” 
This genus contains more than thirty species, mostly 
natives of America or the Cape of Good Hope. They 
are generally hardy herbaceous plants, and expand their 
delicately fragrant flowers in the evening. The GEno- 
thera biennis “ is common in gardens, and often escapes 
from thence into rich waste ground. But on the dreary 
sands of our Lancashire coast it is truly wild, being 
planted there by the hand of nature, though perhaps 
transported, by natural means, from the other side of 
the Atlantic. It has been found in the greatest 
abundance between the first and second ranges of sand¬ 
banks on the coast of Lancashire, a few miles north of 
Liverpool. It also covers several acres of ground near 
G 
