evening primrose

I wasn't thinking of the height so much, but the length of the leaves. The flowering plants didn't have that classic rosette look, but rather clumps of smaller rosettes. Outside of town I saw tons of them growing tall, however, and no doubt the same flower

that could be I have two specimen in the garden which just didn´t grow that high, because a storm broke their stem.

That was one on my list, especially since I saw a non flowering rosette of leaves that looked right. But the rest of the plants seemed to have smaller leaves on stems - or is that just a bi product of being trampled/mowed etc

Now to figure out which one!

my guess is a species of evening primrose; oenothera