Mirabilis - Marvel of Peru - Four O'clocks

I've had these easy, colorful, self seeding plants in my gardens for at least 10 years now. You only have to buy seeds once and will have new plants every year forever. The only time I do buy more seeds is when I would like a different color. Last year I bought seeds called Kaleidoscope and planted them among the red that I already had.



I figured that this year I would still have a nice mix of red and kaleidoscope in the garden. The only problem was not knowing which new seedlings to keep and which to pull up. There's no way to tell which is which until they flower but I thought that the odds of keeping some of each was pretty good, so I just left the ones that were pretty much in a line under the window and pulled the rest up. And there are hundreds to pull up, but they come up easily and it's no big deal.

So this is what I ended up with this year. The kaleidoscope is in there but very hard to see in the picture. I have only had one problem with these pretty flowers over the years. They have never opened their flowers at 4 o'clock. Never. No matter where I have planted them, in front, in back, on the side, more sun, less sun, they will not open at 4 o'clock. They do not even begin to start opening until 7 o'clock.

This was taken at 4 o'clock


This was taken at 8 o'clock.

They must be on Pacific Time.