Queen of the Night


NOTE The Great Backyard Bird Count will be held February 13-16. It is a joint project of Audubon and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Please check out the GBBC website for details. Your participation is important as scientists endeavor to study the status of winter bird populations. You can read more about it in this month's Backyard Birdwatching Almanac article.
Valentine's Day is coming up. I can't think of a better time to write about the mystery and beauty of an exotic houseplant that can certainly inspire thoughts of love and passion.

Miracles happen all the time, even when no one's around to see them happen. When I knew it was about time for my Queen of the Night, aka Epiphyllum oxypetalum, to bloom, I made sure I was awake to see it all. I set up the lights and camera and waited.

In mid-September when there were still lots of hummingbirds migrating through the area and visiting my feeders daily, I would sit in the sunroom and enjoy watching their antics. It was during one of those relaxing interludes that I noticed something different about the epiphyllum- it had two buds!! This plant has been in my keeping for about three years now with no evidence heretofore that it had any intention of blooming. So I was delightfully stunned to find the tiny buds where they had just emerged on the edge of one of the stems. They grew and elongated, changing their appearance from one day to the next.

I watched the buds grow and develop over the next two weeks until they appeared they would virtually burst open! Friends had been coaching me about when the event would probably happen and what to expect. I knew that the first bud would probably open sometime after sunset, probably between eight and nine o'clock. I also knew to expect quite an intoxicating fragrance that would fill the house.

I was not disappointed by the fragrance nor was I disappointed by any phase of the opening and closing which all takes place in the span of about eight hours. That's the thing- if you don't watch it happen, all you get to see the next morning is the limp, closed bloom, ready to be plucked off the stem. So I waited anxiously as the first signs of opening occurred.

The first thing to happen was that little spidery protrusions began to separate from the bud itself. Then the flower itself began to open up- just a little opening at the end of the elongated bud at first, but soon into a very large, beautiful creamy white, fragrant bloom that measured almost five inches in diameter. I sat with my camera and took photos of the emerging miracle happening right before my eyes. Within about three hours, it had opened to its full extent and began to close up again. I was treated to two consecutive nights of this wonder of wonders, when the second bloom repeated the performance minute by minute.

The copyright of the article Queen of the Night in Drawing Nature is owned by Brenda Muncrief. Permission to republish Queen of the Night in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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