September 25, 2006 - the spiky cereus blooms

Since 2000, when the flat-leaved cereus (the Epiphyllum) whose pictures dominate this and the companion site started producing flowers, it bloomed every September 25th, which is my birthday. Actually, the plant missed one of those dates, but no flowers appeared at all during that particular year. This year, the cereus missed by birthday. It has many growing buds, but they're several weeks away from blossoming.

Instead, the cereus with the spiky leaves, mentioned farther below, managed to bloom last night and this morning! This plant was acquired last year, and this is only its third flower (the second this summer) in our custody. It's flower resembles that of the Epiphyllum, but is smaller and has a greenish cast. It's also a short-lived night bloomer, but its flowers appear able to persist longer after sunrise. But it's a cereus, too -- so the tradition of Sept. 25th blooms, somewhat modified, continues!

September 3, 2006 - a sample of eight flowers

Eight flowers opened on the night of September 3rd, including five off a single leaf, four of which can be seen in this picture:




Here are two of those blooms, from a different angle...




Of this unusually productive (for this plant) batch, only one bud remains. It will probably open tonight.

September 2, 2006 - two entangled blooms

Last night, five flowers opened, including this entangled pair. My first thought: Romeo and Juliet.

September 1, 2006 blooms - and a new site

Three of the cereus' buds flowered last night; here are some pictures.










I am occasionally asked by people to make enlargements and reproductions of the pictures from my main cereus site for them. Personally, I'm not set up to handle these requests. As a trial, I have created a website where reprints and enlargements can be ordered, called cereus.exposuremanager.com.

The site is subdivided into three galleries, based on the resolution of the camera used to make the shots. Many of my personal favorite pictures, those shown on the main cereus site, are 2 megapixel photographs. Those won't likely enlarge well beyond 8x10, so I strongly discourage you from doing that. Unfortunately, I see no way of preventing people from ordering massive enlargements of those pictures.

A reminder: Please feel free to leave comments on any post on this site, but if you do so anonymously, I won't be able to respond to you.