Bruce Morrison is a working artist and photographer living with his wife Georgeann in rural southeast O’Brien County, Iowa. Bruce works from his studio/gallery–a renovated late 1920s brooding house/sheep barn. You can follow Morrison on his artist blog, Prairie Hill Farm Studio, or visit his website at Morrison’s studio.
Just a couple years back, Hairy Four O’Clock (Mirabilis albida) was a new one for me; another native Four O’Clock to Iowa—never knew! Thanks to a heads up from friend Lynn Graesing, who discovered it on county ground (southeast O’Brien County) that was once part of her family years ago. Lynn had taken some pictures, but I could not tell her what it was, so went out with my camera to see it for myself and took a few images.
I will readily admit, the easy IDs can be just as confusing as the hard ones for me. I’m sure I make them that way all on my own. Ask my wife: I have trouble finding anything, even if it’s staring me in the face. (Maybe that’s a “guy” thing?)
I then reached out to Tom Lammers, of the Flora of Iowa group on Facebook. (Thanks, Tom!) He quickly pointed out the new (to me) plant: Mirabilis albida.
Absent from all my Iowa books—yes, I still use old fashioned books—it originally had me stumped. After Tom told me what it was, it was like a “duh” moment. Basically, Hairy Four O’Clock is a lankier/stranger version of the more common Wild Four O’Clock (Mirabilis nyctaginea) I see so often.
In fact, I wrote an Iowa wildflower Wednesday post on Wild Four O’Clock in July 2023. You can read that here.
This is the Hairy Four O’Clock. (Mirabilis albida has lots of common names, including White, or Mountain, or Oblong leaved.)
Hairy Four O’Clock is apparently more common in the western half of the U.S., and more common in Iowa’s western counties. Although I didn’t measure the plant’s height while photographing it, it is noted as reaching a height of around 40 inches.
I don’t believe those I was documenting were quite that high, but they were on a gravel esker hilltop, where I suspect growing conditions might be less generous. Like its seemingly more compact common relative, it has those same striking blossoms, and a similar seed profile and presentation.
Other than the familiar and striking small flowers, the leaf structure and prominent stem were the first things I think I noticed with the Hairy Four O’Clock. Unlike its more common cousin’s smooth stem, there are lots of noticeable dense spreading hairs along the stem, though maybe less dense near the base.
The Hairy’s stem is somewhat sticky and noticeably exhibits lines along the stems, at least in the upper part of the plant. But the common name “Hairy” says it all, really.
The majority of its leaves are on the lower part of the plant, below the flowering branches. They are opposite, simple, entire, sessile or with a short petiole. Leaves vary somewhat and are up to 4 inches long, 1½ inches wide and toothless…lance shaped with a pointed tip (although not “sharply” pointed), and taper to a rounded base; they are short stalked to stalkless. Leaves are hairy, more so on the underside, and edges somewhat wavy—especially moving downward on the plant’s stem, toward the plant’s base.
The Missouriplants.com site describes the flowering as “Inflorescences – Terminal and axillary, or sometimes only axillary.” Yes, the flowers are formed at the tip of the plant as well as along the stem moving down along the plant as well. The spacing of this “axillary” placement gives (my words) a kind of open and lanky appearance at first glance.
The same site goes on to say:
Flower clusters with 2-5 flowers, subtended by a calyxlike involucre of fused bracts. Involucre 4-5 mm long at flowering, glabrous or sparsely to densely hairy on the surfaces, sometimes also glandular, becoming enlarged to 8-12 mm long at fruiting, broadly bell-shaped at maturity, with 5 broad shallow lobes, persistent, somewhat flattened, and somewhat papery at fruiting.
An involucre is a whorl of bracts surrounding a flower or flower cluster.
Still citing Missouriplants.com:
Perfect, actinomorphic, rarely seen fully expanded. Calyx 6-10 mm long, 5-lobed, white to pink, the expanded portion bell-shaped to saucer-shaped at flowering, the lobes notched at the tip. Petals absent. Stamens 1-5, the filaments free or sometimes fused into a ring at the base, the anthers attached basally. Pistil 1 per flower, the ovary superior but appearing inferior because of the closely enveloping perianth tube […].
Actinomorphic means this plant’s flowers have a radial symmetry.
In my own lay person’s terms: drop dead gorgeous up close! But as I mentioned near the beginning, very similar in appearance to the Common Four O’Clock, that we are all likely more familiar with.
The Hairy Four O’Clock’s flowers are, from my own perspective, less pink than the Common’s. Much whiter in coloration, yet I could still often see some pink flush coming through on certain plant’s blossoms. Maybe the older flowers get more of that tint showing as they age? I’m unsure, and just thinking out loud.
The Four O’Clocks are commonly described as having their flowers open late in the afternoon and closing by morning. The Hairy’s flowers were always wide open at first light and sunrise. I never stuck around long enough, but perhaps they began closing with the progression of morning. This late afternoon through morning availability is a boon to many pollinators, especially night-time insects like moths.
I couldn’t say if there is a flower size difference between these related species, but the seed from the Hairy Four O’Clocks seem to have a tad less “girth.” They are noted in some of the sources I read through, as somewhat “warty” and definitely hairy. I tried illustrating this by zooming in on a whorl of fused bracts (Involucre) holding seed. That does validate this description.
I can note a bit of inconsistency in the uniformity of the seeds I collected from the plants I photographed in this article. But the presentation of how the seed formed and appears is very similar in each species. That involucre (whorl of bracts described previously) looks the same in both types of Four O’Clocks.
In this next image, I included one dried (now seedless) involucre to illustrate the seed in comparison for size reference with the dime.
All sources give the type of habitat for the Hairy Four O’Clock as pretty much the same as the common variety, but lean more toward “drier habitat”: Upland prairies, sand prairies, gravel slopes, along ledges and bluffs, streambanks, upland forest openings, pastures, roadsides, railroads, and open disturbed areas.
Hairy Four O’Clock (Mirabilis albida) is a cool find indeed. It makes you excited to keep your eyes open, so you don’t miss the next surprise around the bend!
Take a short visit to southeast O’Brien County and enjoy the Hairy Four O’Clocks and morning sounds among the gravel ridges there. Here’s my “Prairie Moment” video: