Once Upon a Night

Elaine Khosrova

The natural phenomena we report on in this publication usually take us outdoors, well beyond the walls of the institute. Here we bring you inside to spotlight a plant that lives not more than six feet from Craig’s desk. Biologically known as Epiphyllum oxypetalum, this botanical resident goes by various colloquial names that rightly suggest its unique nocturnal splendor: Queen of the Night . . . Beauty Under the Moon . . . Night Lotus, and more. A sprawling vine-like cactus (now inching along the ceiling of the institute), it looks unremarkable most of the time but transforms into a captivating beauty — literally overnight — when blooming. It’s allure, however, is short-lived. Each of the plant’s lavish shimmering flowers opens for one night only, with peak display before midnight and then, Cinderella-like, it wilts before dawn.

For the staff at the institute, the flowering of this plant is an honored event. Not only for the brief dazzling phenomenon itself, but also because its occurrence happens so unpredictably. Some time between early summer and early fall, our Queen may bloom once, several times, or not at all. Only when flower buds appear — small and pale peach-colored, drooping from thick “stalks” — can we anticipate the night show to come. The buds grow and mature for a couple of weeks. In the days just before flowering, each bud (we have seen as few as one, as many as twelve) will begin to gently arch its pointy tip upward toward the light, changing orientation from hanging to horizontal. In the process, its body of tightly rolled petals grows longer, thicker, and more veiled in an outer layer of wispy tendrils. As longtime observers of this quickening in the plant, the Holdreges are usually able to predict from its orientation which night a particular bud, or several, will flower.

Late on the appointed eve last September, my daughter and I returned to the institute, flashlights in hand, our noses detecting that the prediction of bud opening was correct as soon as we stepped through the front door; the Queen is highly aromatic when flowering. The heavy scent, a kind of herbal vanilla, trailed through the air growing stronger as we climbed the stairs to reach its source. As we got closer to the unruly tangle of vines, shining our tiny light in the pitch dark, a cluster of large pearl-white flowers suddenly came into focus. Gasp. Their beauty does not disappoint. The flowers have both a wild exuberance in their form as well as a delicate — even regal — architecture. With luminous pointed petals radiating from a center filled with gold-topped stamen, each nocturnal blossom creates its own starriness. All the more striking then to find, next morning, all the flowers limp and deflated as if exhausted by their one extravagant night.

Our particular Epiphyllum oxypetalum is a long way from its native habitat in the rainforests of Central America. Given to the institute as a cutting 20 years ago, it has thrived in its pot by a large picture window where it gets a feast of light. Like other cacti, it is technically leafless, but its broad, flat aerial stems are leaf-like in appearance — until flower buds emerge from the margins. The plant’s night-blooming behavior is connected with its pollinators. In the wild, the Queen’s nocturnal offering attracts bats. But at the institute, we are the lucky ones drawn in.