Dreams of fantasy flowers dance in gardeners’ heads: Real Dirt
Everyone with a green thumb has a particular plant they’d just love to be able to grow. Sonia Day pines for a Epiphyllum oxypetalum, or night blooming cereus.
Dreamstime
Epiphyllum oxypetalum, or night blooming cereus.
What’s your “fantasy flower?”
All gardeners have one. It’s a certain flower
(or shrub or vine) that we yearn to grow but can’t, for a variety of
reasons. Not enough sun, perhaps. Or our garden is too small. Or we live
in the wrong zone. Or the plant is rare and costs a bundle.
So we shove the thought to the back of our
minds and settle for something else. But then one day a gardener comes
along who actually owns the object of our desire — and we’re jealous as
hell.
It happened to me recently, after spotting a
post on Facebook by Toronto master gardener Tena van Andel. She reported
great success with an oddball cactus named Epiphyllum oxypetalum,
commonly called a night blooming cereus (although strictly speaking, it
belongs to a different species from true cereus). A photo of its huge,
extraordinary white flower accompanied her post — and wow, I went green
with envy.
That’s because my unfulfilled fantasy is to
own a cereus too. The reason? This particular plant made me realize what
joy there can be in growing things. Here’s how: I lived in the Bahamas
as a teenager where my Dad, a keen gardener, once persuaded the whole
family to stay up till dawn, so we could witness his own cereus coming
into bloom on our patio.
The experience was quite mystical. Dad’s
flower (unlike Van Andel’s) had the colour and texture of creamy silk.
When the petals slowly jerked open after dark, thousands of superfine
stamens burst forth, looking like spun gold. I also recall an incredible
perfume. But then this spectacular specimen withered away (as cereus
always do) before the sun came up.
Since then, I’ve often wanted to copy Dad. But
my life changed. I moved to Canada where such magical all-nighters are
out of the question unless you’re lucky enough own a heated greenhouse
or conservatory.
That, I discovered, is what Tena Van Andel
has. And thus equipped, she says it’s not difficult to coax such cacti
to bloom. The only requirement is endless patience.
“A friend gave me some pieces off her plant,
which had never bloomed,” she explains. “I didn’t do anything special to
them. I just planted one piece in the ground inside my greenhouse and
another in a pot.
Then I just let Mother Nature do her thing. But it took three years to get a bloom.”
Van Andel named her cereus Sumi Jo, after the soprano famed for portraying the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute.
It’s an appropriate moniker, because Mexicans,
who are blessed with many jaw-dropping cacti, call the cereus Reina de
La Noche (or Queen of the Night).
Will I ever possess this captivating diva
myself? Perhaps. Besides lusting after her, I now fantasize about
quitting the frozen north — and acquiring a little courtyard garden down
Mexico way, full of tropical exotica.
It hasn’t happened yet. But, ah, one day . . .
And if you want to hear more about Tena Van
Andel’s envy-making greenhouse, she’s speaking at Canada Blooms. Her
talk on orchids is part of the master gardener lecture series, on
Tuesday, March 15 at 1 p.m. For more information, visit canadablooms.ca.
soniaday.com
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