Last fall, we acquired a night-blooming cereus plant (more correctly known as epiphyllum oxypetalum) from someone on Freecycle.  I was told that it had never bloomed in its former home.  We thought, “well, maybe we’ll get lucky”.  So it sat on the porch until the weather got cold, and then it sat by a window in the house over the winter, getting watered once a week or so.

This past spring, we put it outside again, giving it water more often.  Lo, and behold, we discovered a little bloom right around the beginning of July.

Here is the plant with the flower on the right, after 4 or 5 days’ growth:

And a close-up view of the flower:

One of the fascinating things about this plant’s flowers, as you can see from the pictures, is the the flower grows directly off the side of a leaf.  It makes sense, though, when you know that the plant is related to cacti.

The flower opened that night.  Here it is beginning to do so:

Opening much more after dark:

And fully open, shortly before we went to bed:

The next morning, it had mostly closed up again, and it stayed closed until it withered (as these are wont to do).

Will we get another bloom next summer, or even earlier?  We shall see!