It’s our second bloom night! I talk about our Night blooming Cereus Bloom Watch (which ended up being less than 24 hours) here and our Night-blooming Cereus First Bloom Night here. One of our night blooming cereus bloomed last night, three of the remaining four bloomed tonight, and I think that the stubborn fourth one maybe bloom tomorrow night unless it surprises us and blooms between 9 and midnight tonight.
I did take a picture of our first night blooming cereus flowers this morning. They were closed and beginning to wilt.
This is our stubborn late bloomer. It is one of our more interesting night blooming cereus because it’s very exposed where it is. There are no mesquite trees hovering over it and no dead branches in the way of view. The upside to this: it will be much easier to take pictures with nothing in the way!
I am going to do something a little different with this post. I’ll put up pictures of each plant grouped as it looked before blooming, while blooming (if I have it), and then when fully bloomed. To continue to the next set of flowers, just click the page numbers at the bottom of the page after the pictures of related posts. I also will post a picture of the desert plants around the night blooming cereus. This cactus certainly does like it’s creepy locales!
This night blooming cactus is by one of my favorite barrel cactus groupings. It’s also pretty close to the house so you don’t have to go far to see it. Let’s call it the Three Musketeers.
You can see the patch of barrel cactus behind the mesquite tree.
One of the flowers just didn’t want to be photographed. Being right by one of the cactus stems made it hard to take pictures of one of the flowers.
There were a lot of dead branches around this cactus, which is why I say they seem to like their growing environment to be creepy.
This is the night blooming cereus that is a mesquite tree-hugger. This one’s flowers were the most difficult to take good pictures of. I did my best. I thought it was interesting how this one seems to be a little different from the others: sparser petals and more yellow in color.
Hmm… it’s amazing this tree didn’t scare me off at 10 PM. Maybe it’s because Josh was with me. I am very thankful for my chicken coop mucking boots though. I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to venture out in the dark in my tennis shoes!
I think the last night blooming cereus is probably my favorite. I took many pictures of these but will try to only share a few! I call them the four ladies dancing (like the Christmas song).
Don’t they look like four ladies dancing in this picture? Somehow, these flowers seem lacier and more elegant than the others we’ve seen so far. Maybe it’s because they are more fully bloomed than the others.
I thought the shadows of the filaments and anthers on the petals were interesting in this picture. It was nice to have a light that I could move around to change the lighting in my pictures.
We weren’t really able to smell the night blooming cereus scent last night because of the breeze, but tonight we were able to! Perhaps it is because the plants had more flowers than two. The scent isn’t quite vanilla but it does smell nice! I think I might have disturbed a wasp on one of the flowers during my photo session. It was hiding on the stem underneath the flower. I’m glad it wasn’t mad at me! Josh and I did make a curve-billed thrasher upset with us and it followed us around the yard (or maybe we were trespassing on its territory) until we left the area.
Hopefully, I’ll be up for another late night tomorrow with our third bloom night!
-Lynn
This post is the third in a series. You can read the remaining posts here:
Night blooming Cereus: Bloom Watch
Night blooming Cereus: First Bloom
Night blooming Cereus: Third Bloom