A date with the queen 8·4·10

August 5, 2010 by admin

Usually a date with the queen to me means an epic session at rincon but there is another queen that graced my night last night…The Night Blooming Cereus, also known as the Queen of the Night, is a wonder to be seen. Now, I am not some flower freak, but this thing is incredible. This flower only blooms once a year, and starts opening up as the sun sets, and by midnight is fully open…only to close again by the time the sun rises. It is ghostly white and light sensitive, so you have to watch it bloom in a very dark room- in this case it is in the painting studio of a great friend of mine. In any case, the only light we could illuminate it with were very dim colored lights, thus all these amazing hues (you don’t really get the full feeling from these photos, because the photo file is so big that when I have to compress it to post in on this site, the color hues get mixed up and pixelated, as seen above…email me and I will send you the large file for your viewing enjoyment). Click here for more shots from last night. Oh yeah, the smell is intoxicating and very similar to the night blooming jasmine that we have all over socal. yum.