how long since transplant?

and i think they open at.. wait for it... 4 o'clock ... you are looking at the right time??? .. lol ...

any fert applied???

ken

ps: do they bud at all??

Your plants don't have enough sun if they only get morning sun. They are not a shade or part shade plant, but a full sun plant and should have a full days sun.

Four O'clocks flower buds open in late afternoon and stay open for the night and close in the morning.

I have not transplanted, these are tubers from self sowing.
I will make sure to translpand one to a full sun spot. And yes, they do bud.. the buds are huge and full of promise...

No fert lately though...

However, I will keep you posted.

I tried them last year. They got full sun except in the very early morning and the flowers didn't open up until 7:00 or so. The plants looked weedy to me so I yanked them out (and am still yanking all the seedlings they produced, ugh).

darknox, I'm not clear on what your plants are doing. Are the buds turning brown and falling off without opening? Or are they just hanging on the plant, bright and shiny and stubbornly not opening? Or are they falling off and then seeds are forming?

If you see seeds forming, the plants are blooming, just not when you've been looking. If the buds die without opening, something's wrong but I don't know what.

If all you see are buds, and no fallen buds or flowers, it could be that your plants are busy preparing to flower and simply aren't ready yet.

I am growing four o'clocks this year. It's my first year growing them and all of mine are this year's seedlings. I don't have tubers yet, so I don't know how overwintering a tuber affects blooming. I do know that the batch of seedlings I started six weeks before my last frost date are not even beginning to bud. The two plants I started in early March are blooming, though they taunted me with buds for two or three weeks before actually opening a flower. All the plant books I've checked say normal bloom time is late summer, around August.

Also keep in mind that four o'clocks can't actually tell time. They open in response to temperature changes. The actual time the flowers open varies depending on your weather/micro-climate that day. Has your weather been significantly different from last year's?