Plant Story--Oenothera curtiflora, Velvetweed, Small-Flowered Gaura,

Velvetweed is a very widespread plant, found all across the United States except the Northeast. It stands up to 9' tall and yet has a very low profile. 

velvetweed, Oenothera curtiflora

Velvetweed forms a rosette of leaves and then sends up a flowering stalk that is 4-6' tall, sometimes taller. Usually it flowers and dies in one year, sometimes it waits to flower until the second year, so it is mainly an annual, sometimes a biennial. It is marvelously ungainly, going up and up to have small (1/4") flowers along the top of the stalk. The flowers are very pretty close up, but mostly we walk by and don't notice them.

A rosette of velvetweed in March

A young plant in March, waiting for warm weather
about 4" across

When things go well, velvetweed bolts during the late spring

velvetweed bolting

and then turn into a very tall plant, leaves going up the stem about four feet, then long flower stalks with the rather small flowers on each side extending several feet more:

velvetweed, Oenothera curtiflora
on a Colorado hillside

I don't have good close-ups of the flowers; velvetweed is a very unphotogenic plant, always with part of it out of focus. Here I blew up a photo so you can see the flower structure. They are pretty! 

velvetweed flower

This is one of many prairie plants that has been reclassified. For many years it was in the genus Gaura, of the evening primrose family, Onagraceae, as small-flowered gaura, Gaura parviflora. A detailed analysis in 2007 determined that the gauras are all evening primroses, genus Oenothera, and merged them into Oenothera. There was already an Oenothera parviflora so Gaura parviflora became Oenothera curtiflora. The species epithet parviflora means "small flowered" and curtiflora "short-flowered." 

The origin of the word Oenothera is not known. One set of theories has it from the Greek oinos wine and thera booty, the idea being that it described a plant used for flavoring wine. Alternatively, onos is from "ass" and thera defined here as "to pursue" or ther "wild beast." The catch for both of these is that Oenothera species, all 150 or so, are New World, so there is no traditional relationship between the plant and its scientific name. By the time it was named, one Oenothera, the common evening primrose, Oenothera biennis was well-known in Europe, eaten as a vegetable. But nobody knows why Linnaeus chose Oenothera for the name of the genus.

The common name I learned for velvetweed was small-flowered gaura. Now that it is no longer a gaura the common name you see is velvetweed. Velvetweed refers to the soft hairs on the leaves and stems. It was called velvety gaura in plant id books from the 1980s and earlier. Making it velvetweed, in the sense that a weed is a plant we don't use, and abandoning the name gaura, makes sense, but one must remember not to confuse it with velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti) a mallow (hibiscus family, Malvaceae) which is also called velvetweed.  

Velvetweed is a native wildflower. It is certainly native to the plains of North America. It is now found in most states, west to the Pacific, east to the Atlantic, though not north into New England or in Canada. It was first collected for western science in 1826 in Walla Walla, Washington by David Douglas (1799-1834). It grows in disturbed areas and has made itself a troublesome exotic weed in Argentina, Australia, China, and Japan.

Sometimes, I saw it in large numbers in tallgrass prairie remnants. The photos below show it at Nine-Mile Prairie, in Lincoln, Nebraska. The plants sticking out above the grass are velvetweed. They lift a foot or more above the canopy. And that is the answer to the riddle of: why does this plant get so tall? Because when growing in a healthy tallgrass prairie, to stick its flowers out over the 5-6' grasses, it has to be that tall. 

velvetweed in tallgrass prairie

The flowers are called white by most plant books but seem to fade to pink, and may start pink some places. The only study I can find of pollination in velvetweed found no pollinators but excellent seed set, so it can reliably self-pollinate. However, other species related to velvetweed have similar-shaped flowers pollinated by moths at night and bees and butterflies in the morning, so I think additional studies of pollination might show some insect pollination. Sticking the flowers above the prairie is important for insect pollination, not for self-pollination. However it probably also aids in dispersing the seeds farther. Krakos and Austin found a number of Oenothera species in which they interpreted the flower structure as suggesting an "evolutionary lag between ancestral and contemporary pollinators" (p. 63). Taxonomic studies comment that velvetweed flowers have no nectar and sometimes a reduced number of petals, so losing its animal-attracting charcteristics is a reasonable interpretation of pretty white and pink flowers held well above the tallgrass canopy but needing no insect visitors. 

small velvetweed in a dry Colorado slope

When I moved to Colorado in 2006 I planted a native grass seed mix as a "prairie" and I have added other native plants over time. A few years ago I noticed velvetweed in my artificial prairie and, recognizing it from Nebraska, called it as a weed and pulled it out. After a couple years of pulling up a couple plants each summer, I reconsidered: Wait, this is a native wildflower! So I watched anxiously in 2024 to see if any came up. And yes! its seeds were long-lived enough to restart a population. One of those plants was the big plant shown in the first photo above, towering over my 2-3 foot prairie. I don't have many velvetweed plants coming up for 2026, but I have at least one--the rosette shown above.

velvetweed growing toward flowering

Native Americans used the leaves for cooling and to reduce fevers, to treat burns and put them into pillows to counter insomnia. The Hopi drank a decoction of velvetweed root for snakebite. The Zuni chewed fresh or dried roots before sucking out the venom of a snakebite and then used velvetweed as a poultice on the wound. The Navajo Kayenta reported cooking velvetweed roots with meat in stews. And Navajo dancers protected themselves from burns during the Fire Dance at Mountain Chant with velvetweed. 

Not your usual wildflower, velvetweed is an intriguing native. 

Comments and corrections welcome.

References

Carr, B. L., D. P. Gregory, P. H. Raven and W. Tal. 1988. Experimental hybridization, chromosomal diversity and phylogeny within Gaura (Onagraceae). American Journal of Botany 75(4): 484-495. 

Krakos, K. N. and M. W. Austin. 2020. Testing pollination syndromes in Oenothera (Onagraceae). Journal of Pollination Ecolgy. 26 (7): 52-66.

Krakos, K. N. and S. A. Fabricant. 2014. Generalized versus specialized pollination systems in Oenothera (Onagraceae). Journal of Pollination Ecology. 14(22): 235-243.

Missouri Plant Finder. Oenothera lindheimeri. Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis. link (Accessed 4/5/26)

Moerman, D. 1999. Gaura parviflora Native American Ethnobotany. Timber Press. Portland, OR. I can't find it in the online database. 

Stearn, W. T. 1997. Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners. Cassell Publications, LTD. London. 

Wagner, W. L., P. C. Hoch, and P. H. Raven. 2007. Revised classification of the Onagraceae.  Systematic Botany Monographs 83: 1-240 (see pp. 167-168, 211, 222).

Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist
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