Queen for One Night!

Back in 2007, while visiting my sister-in-law in New York, I noticed this strange and scraggly looking leafy cactus in her kitchen and commented on it. Well, she told me it was called 'Queen of the Night' and that it blooms for just one night in mid summer. I was intrigued and came back to Florida with a leaf cutting from her plant.

This plant is also called Night Blooming Cereus Epiphyllum Oxypetalum. The flower buds appear along the notches of the flat, scallop edged leaf. After 2 years of careful and not so careful nurturing, it bloomed in September of 2009. Only one bud survived all the way to a full, dinner-plate size bloom. Here is a sequence of the large bud (about 10 days old) blooming.

10 pm

11 pm

Midnight

2 am - absolutely stunning. It is supposed to have a very fragrant smell, but I did not smell anything.

5 am - begining to close up and droop, her short reign over.

This year two buds made it all the way! September 2010 - 2.00 am one morning last week -  two flowers! How about that? I did not take pictures all night long as I did last year, it was a week night and had to get up for work the next morning. But I woke up at 2.00 am and was a beautiful sight. I got to take better care of my plant, repot it into a larger container, for more blooms next year.

Have you heard about this plant before? If anyone wants a cutting to start their own, let me know and I will figure out a way to mail it to you. It would have to be within the mainland of USA, due to agircultural regulations about shipping plant material outside mainland USA.