Oenothera curtiflora (syn. Gaura parviflora), known as velvetweed, velvety gaura, downy gaura, or smallflower gaura, is a species of flowering plant native to the central United States and northern Mexico, from Nebraska and Wyoming south to Durango and Nuevo Leon.
Taxonomy Oenothera curtiflora was long known as Gaura parviflora, this name being published in 1830 and for a long time considered the correct name for the species. However, an overlooked but validly published name G. mollis had been published earlier by Edwin James in 1823. A proposal was made to conserve the name G. parviflora over G. mollis,Wagner, W. L., & Hoch, P. (2000). Proposal to Reject the Name Gaura mollis (Onagraceae). Taxon 49 (1): 101-102. and this was accepted by the International Botanical Congress Committee for Spermatophyta.Brummitt, R. K. (2001). Report of the Committee for Spermatophyta: 52. Taxon 50 (4): 1179-1182. In 2007 it was moved to the genus Oenothera by Warren Lambert Wagner and Peter Coonan Hoch as Oenothera curtiflora. The genus Gaura created by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 is a synonym of Oenothera according to Plants of the World Online (POWO).
Oenothera curtiflora has synonyms, six of them species, according to POWO.
Table of Synonyms Name Year Rank Notes Gaura australis 1879 species = het. Gaura hirsuta 1848 species = het. Gaura micrantha 1840 species = het. Gaura mollis 1823 species = het., nom. utique rej. Gaura parviflora 1830 species ≡ hom. Gaura parviflora var. typica 1938 variety ≡ hom. Gaura parviflora f. glabra 1938 form = het. Gaura parviflora var. lachnocarpa 1925 variety = het. Schizocarya micrantha 1835 species = het. Notes: ≡ homotypic synonym; = heterotypic synonym
Description It is an annual plant growing to 0.2–2 m (rarely 3 m) tall, unbranched, or if branched, only below the flower spikes. The leaves are long, lance-shaped, and are covered with soft hair. The flower spikes are long, covered with green flower buds, which open at night or before dawn with small flowers diameter with four pink petals.Jepson Flora: Gaura parvifloraSouthwest Environmental Information Network: Gaura mollis Wildflowers of Tucson: Gaura mollis
Uses Among the Zuni people, fresh or dried root would be chewed by medicine man before sucking snakebite and poultice applied to wound.Camazine, Scott and Robert A. Bye 1980 A Study Of The Medical Ethnobotany Of The Zuni Indians of New Mexico. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2:365-388 (p. 377)
Introduction It is naturalized and often invasive in other parts of the United States, and in Australia, China, Japan, and South America.Flora of China: Gaura parvifloraPlantNet (Australia): Gaura parviflora
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