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She drew a little box from her pocket, and took out of it a taper-stand of chased silver. "Mrs. Gore asked me to bring it to you, with her love. She wouldn't send it yesterday, she said, because it would look so like nothing by the side of costly gifts. Pretty, graceful little thing! isn't it? It is an evening-primrose, I think, 'love's own light, hey, Delphine?"
The parents were the common evening-primrose or Oenothera biennis and of its small-flowered congener, Oenothera muricata. These two forms were distinguished by Linnaeus as different species, but have been considered by subsequent writers as elementary species or so-called systematic varieties of one species designated with the name of the presumably older type, the O. biennis.
The same forms that are produced most often by the parent-family are also most ordinarily met with among the offspring of the shiny evening-primrose. They are oblonga, lata and nanella.
The first half is the same for all the organs of the plant, and is therefore termed individual; the second differs in the separate members, and consequently is known as partial. Which of the two halves is the greater and which the lesser, of course depends on the cases considered. Finally we may describe a single example, the length of the capsules of the evening-primrose.
This form is met with in different parts of France, while the biennis and muricata are very common in the sandy regions of Holland, where I have observed them for more than 40 years. They are very constant and have proven so in my experiments. Besides these three species, the large-flowered evening-primrose, or Oenothera lamarckiana, is found in some localities in Holland and elsewhere.
The three first generations were biennial, but the five last annual. Gener: O.gig. albida obl. rubrin. Lam. nanella lata. scint. It is most striking that the various mutations of the evening-primrose display a great degree of regularity. There is no chaos of forms, no indefinite varying in all degrees and in all directions.
In other words we may state "that current misconceptions as to the extreme range of fluctuating variability of many native species have generally arisen from a failure to recognize the composite nature of the forms in question," as has been demonstrated by MacDougal in the case of the common evening-primrose, Oenothera biennis.
There is as yet no evening-primrose to open suddenly, no cistus to drop its petals; but the May-flower knows the hour, and becomes more fragrant in the darkness, so that one can then often find it in the woods without aid from the eye.
It must be assigned to some external factor, and as soon as this is discovered the way for experimental investigation is open. In the second place we must consider the past. On the supposition of permanency all the ancestors of the evening-primrose must have been mutable.
The blade shows numbers of convexities on either surface, the whole surface being undulated in this manner; it lacks also the brightness of the ordinary evening-primrose or Oenothera biennis. These undulations are lacking or at least very rare on the leaves of the new laevifolia.
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