{"id":273,"date":"2005-10-21T10:22:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-21T17:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/fire\/2005\/10\/21\/sweet-four-oclock\/"},"modified":"2006-04-17T17:06:42","modified_gmt":"2006-04-18T00:06:42","slug":"sweet-four-oclock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2005\/10\/21\/sweet-four-oclock\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Four O&#8217;Clock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fireflyforest.com\/flowers\/1642\/mirabilis-longiflora-sweet-four-oclock\/\">Mirabilis longiflora (Sweet Four O&#8217;Clock or Maravilla)<\/a> has been added to my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fireflyforest.com\/flowers\/\">Wildflowers of Tucson, Arizona<\/a> website.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2005\/October\/Mirabilis-longiflora-flower.jpg\" alt=\"Mirabilis longiflora (Sweet Four O'Clock or Maravilla)\" width=\"480\" height=\"350\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Sweet Four O&#8217;Clocks have sweetly fragrant, white to pale pink, tubular flowers with dark pink centers. The flowers are up to 8 inches (20 cm) long, and their curling, magenta stamens are even longer, projecting as much as 2 inches (5 cm) beyond the flower tips. The flowers open around dusk and close the following morning.<\/p>\n<p>Sweet Four O&#8217;Clocks are perennials and sprout from tuberous roots. The plants form large, spreading mounds and can be up to 5 feet (1.5 m) tall, although they are usually around 3 feet (91 cm) tall.<\/p>\n<p>These lush, tropical-looking plants are native to here in the Southwest and Mexico, but they are cultivated in other areas where they make dramatic and fragrant additions to moonlight gardens.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2005\/October\/Mirabilis-longiflora.jpg\" alt=\"Mirabilis longiflora (Sweet Four O'Clock or Maravilla)\" width=\"350\" height=\"525\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I discovered large numbers of these plants growing along the stream at Molino Canyon Vista Overlook in September. I took these pictures around sunset. Even though I had already seen these plants during the day with their flowers closed, I was still amazed at their glorious evening floral display. Their Latin name, Mirabilis, as well as their Spanish name, Maravilla, both mean &#8220;marvelous&#8221;, which these lovely, nocturnal wildflowers certainly are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mirabilis longiflora (Sweet Four O&#8217;Clock or Maravilla) has been added to my Wildflowers of Tucson, Arizona website. Sweet Four O&#8217;Clocks have sweetly fragrant, white to pale pink, tubular flowers with dark pink centers. The flowers are up to 8 inches (20 cm) long, and their curling, magenta stamens are even longer, projecting as much as&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2005\/10\/21\/sweet-four-oclock\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More &rarr; <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona-wild-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}