Unfortunately, I have no picture - the drought apparently killed all these plants I had. The plant is about a foot tall, with a bright yellow flower that looks like a large buttercup. Blooms mid-to-late spring. I bought it at a native plant sale (I'm near Baltimore), so it's native to this area. It spread nicely.
Alan
Does it looks like the images at
Seems to fit all your descriptions (well, with the possible exception of native, but most/many of the yellow evening primrose species are native to the Baltimore area).
If this is it, look closely at where your plants had been growing. This time of year, the flower stalks are dying (or seem to be), but the plant is putting out small clusters of leaves (from slightly underground growths).
The drought didn't get mine (near Washington, DC), so it is possible that you just don't recognize the flower stalk and the small leaf clusters as being the same plant (I know I didn't the first year).
In message , Jim Kingdon writes
Do Evening Primroses bloom as early as mid to late spring? (The ones I've seen, don't, in the UK, but it's the annual, not the perennial, ones that are common here.)
I'd suggest Caltha palustris (Marsh Marigold). (Which as a marsh plant might be expected to be drought sensitive.)
I'm trying to remember a specific month, but they certainly were blooming before the black-eyed susans and other summer plants. I'm guessing May. Maybe June.
Easy enough for the original poster to look at both photos and distinguish between these two. The evening primrose has more of a single vertical stem (or a few), whereas the Marsh Marigold looks like more of a bush shape.
But there are a lot of yellow flowers that look a bit like a buttercup (not just in one family, either, probably because the ancestor to most of the dicots probably looked something like a buttercup).
That could be it.
That's possible. Thanks.
Alan
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