Gaura parviflora

Gaura parviflora
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Rosids
Order:	Myrtales
Family:	Onagraceae
Genus:	Gaura
Species:	G. parviflora
Binomial name
Gaura parviflora Dougl. ex Lehm.

Gaura parviflora (syn. G. mollis James; velvetweed, velvety gaura, downy gaura, or smallflower gaura) is a species of Gaura native to the central United States and northern Mexico, from Nebraska and Wyoming south to Durango and Nuevo Leon.^[1]

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 2–20 centimetres (0.79–7.87 in) long, lance-shaped, and are covered with soft hair. The flower spikes are 20–30 centimetres (7.9–11.8 in) long, covered with green flower buds, which open at night or before dawn with small flowers 5 millimetres (0.20 in) diameter with four pink petals.^[2][3][4]

Nomenclature

The species remains widely known as Gaura parviflora, this name being published in 1832 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 Thomas Potts James in 1825. A proposal was made to conserve the name G. parviflora over G. mollis,^[5] and this was accepted by the International Botanical Congress Committee for Spermatophyta, so G. parviflora remains the correct name.^[6] Despite this, the rejected name G. mollis appears in some major sources.^[7]

Uses

Among the Zuni people, fresh or dried root would be chewed by medicine man before sucking snakebite and poultice applied to wound.^[8]

Weed status

It is naturalized and often invasive in other parts of the United States, and in Australia, China, Japan, and South America.^[7][9][10]

References