I heard Kathryn Tucker Windom on Alabama Public Radio the other morning, and she was remembering some beloved plants, including encounters with the night blooming cereus, plants that open into big exotic blooms late at night,only to close up and die at dawn the next morning! I was tempted to grab the phone and invite her to my home because it just so happens there was a bloom about to open on my cereus! I didn't call, but I did determine to photograph the event, and here are some of the resulting shots:
Although the photos show the plant's beauty, they can't share the unique aroma the blooms give off..."exotic" is the only word I can come up with to describe it...very sweet smelling.
My own Night Blooming Cereus is the offspring of a plant that was owned by an actress in New York. My brother got a clipping of it from her decades ago (so long ago he doesn't remember who it was, though my memory tells me it was a name you would all know instantly), and my clipping came from his. They are ridiculously easy to propagate. Cut a piece of the long stems that reach for the nearest light source during the winter and stick it in potting soil. It may take a year or two before you get your first blooms, but it is well worth it!
Don't think I've ever seen one.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite fragrant flowers is gardenia. I recollect as a young child visiting Uncle Thomas' and Aunt Esther's place near Duncanville many times - with my family, of course. He was a cabinet maker, and we still have some of the wooden swings he made and gave to us.
On the corner of their house was the most gorgeous and large evergreen shrub I'd ever seen - the gardenia. That shrub was - as best I recollect - perhaps 10 feet tall (or so it seemed to a 10 year old boy) - and was so full of blooms that their yard was transformed into a fragrant Heaven on Earth.
Then, of course, when the spicy pungent aroma of cedar from the workshop wafted out... oh my! It was a veritable olfactory delight!
Not too long ago, I'd discovered some "weeds" which had some of the most fragrant flowers I've smelled in quite some time. Not knowing what they were, I'd enlisted numerous individuals' expert assistance.
As it turned out, a long-time collegiate friend of mine from TN had stopped by for a visit, and we drove up into the hills in my Jeep so he could see and smell the tiny white flower-weeds which fragranced the humid night air. He also had volunteered to assist me in finding their name. As we were driving back down with a sizable sample, he quipped, "Yeah... that's just what the cops need to see."
"What do you mean?," I asked.
"Well, imagine this scenario," he replied.
"The cops stop you, for whatever reason, ask to see your ID and say, 'what are y'all doing up there?' You answer, 'we just went up to pick some flowers.'"
"Yeah... that's just what they need to see - a two burly guys coming down from a mountain with a car full of flowers!"
Perhaps the most memorable fragrance around nightfall I recollect is the honeysuckle.
As a teen, I used to ride many solitary miles on my bicycle in the countryside. As nightfall began late one summer's eve, I was pedaling my way back home, this time with my companions - the relative silence of the pastures and woods, the changing of the color guard from daylight to dusk and honeysuckle aromatically perfuming the cooling air as my churning legs carried me over hill and dale.