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Night Blooming Cereus - July 26, 2010


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Several years ago, Judith and Chris Reiss gave me a cutting of a Night Blooming Cereus (also called Queen of the Night or Reina de la Noche).  It certainly has adapted well and has bloomed the last two years.  Last night I was able to video tape it as it opened.  There were two blooms next to each other and I had to position the blooms a little to get the best view.  

There are several genera and species of this night blooming cactus but this is Epiphyllum and, according to Wikipedia, is native to Sri Lanka. 

I set up my camera around 8:00 pm and started recording just a few minutes after 9:00 pm.  The camera only allowed 90 minutes of taping.  This video is the result of that taping and doing time lapse in IMovie of 1 frame for every 60 frames of video.  This particular species has a very fragrant aroma.  It blooms for one to several nights.  There was one spent bloom before I began filming and there is still one potential bloom left on the plant.  I’ll try to capture that one tonight. 

My video camera is a Sony DCR-TRV10.  Some of you may remember that when this came out in the 80s, it was called the camera with X-ray vision in that you could supposedly see through clothes with it when used in night shot mode.  Don’t know about that, but I used the night shot mode to capture the bloom.

© Fred Searcy 2017