Cereus: by Hubert SchrieblBy Louise Jones
Photography by Hurbert Schriebl
It blooms just once by the light of the moon.
One warm summer night, photographer Hubert Schriebl and I sat on a comfortable sunporch in Dorset and watched seven night-blooming cereus flowers open. If you think this sounds like watching grass grow, you'd be very wrong. Each tubular bud opened gradually into a huge, creamy white, fragrant flower, which lives just one night. Joan Menson of Dorset, a retired packaging designer and art director, owns three cereus plants. "You never know until about 6:30 in the evening if it will really open that night," she says of the individual blossoms, "but by 9:30 they've opened before your very eyes." It takes five to six hours for the tightly closed buds to open completely. A sun and heat loving plant, its flowers emit a heavy, intense perfume.
Joan has owned the largest for nine years; it's at least seven feet tall and has been cut back many times. The others are about six feet and three feet tall. The branches twine and send out tendrils. "They're easy to grow. The main thing is that they need a proper support because they're going for the sky! They reach for the light and the tendrils will clutch the wall," she says. "The first blossoms appear the middle of May and continue to early October. They love the sun and humidity and heat, but not artificial heat." A few years ago during a very cold winter, Joan's husband Robert hooked up an electric heater on the porch to provide extra warmth for the plants, but it didn't work. They dried out.
The night-blooming cereus, often called Queen of the Night, is a member of the cactus family.
