The Eveningstar

One of the largest native flowers to blossom in Montana is also one of the easiest to miss. It’s a ghost of sorts—blooming only at night and closing up shop by day.

This time of year, Mentzelia decapetala, a large, pale wildflower more commonly known as Eveningstar, enters its blooming cycle. The flowers open only as daylight wanes and the fruit-basket colors of sunset spill forth from where the sun has cleaved the horizon. Then, like paper lanterns, the Eveningstar’s creamy petals unfurl in full—sometimes measuring five inches across.

By morning, they’re gone again—folded in on themselves, invisible to the casual eye. You could walk by a whole hillside of them and never know they were there.

Eveningstar doesn’t want rich soil or coddled garden beds. It thrives where other things fail here in Montana—on gravel slopes, cracked clay, exposed roadside embankments, and hardpan prairie. Its roots go deep, its stems grow bristly, and its blooms rise from a tangle of angular, gray-green leaves. It’s not trying to be pretty—by location or by day.

The plant doesn’t last long in any one place, and it never begs to be noticed. Eveningstar is primarily pollinated by nocturnal moths, especially hawkmoths, which are active at dusk and throughout the night.

Some late evenings, I catch Eveningstars blooming on a particular roadside cut through a shale bench in the ranchlands near my house. More often than not, I stop to admire these jewels of the night. We are the lucky few who find them on our way to midnight.

Eveningstar (With My Hand for Reference to Size)

A Pair of Eveningstar

—Mitchell Hegman