There are going to be a lot of pictures here, I hope I'm not being rude with this many. If I'm violating netiquette, please let me know. I've reduced the size so they don't take too long to appear. They were all taken with my old phone so the quality isn't exceptional, but it's good enough.
Here in Florida, June is the month for the Night Blooming Cereus cacti to bloom. Each flower is huge and each flower only blooms for one night. Lately they've been arriving in mid-May - I assume it's climate change related. The plant itself cannot take a freeze. They believe they originated in Mexico, but none are found in the wild.
The first ones opened a couple of weeks ago. The following pictures are from last year, mostly in June.
Here is a picture of one of our Sabal Palm trees. The cactus climbs up the tree and the large buds are about to open
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In this closer look, you can see little white fuzz balls on the cactus, they are future blooms. It takes about two days to go from the fuzz ball to the full bud.
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It's dark, they are half open and this is how big they are:
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with flash
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Close ups:
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with insect
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small bunch
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I've got hundreds more, but I think I've already overdone it.
We have a second species that will bloom later in the year, but not with such profusion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-blooming_cereus
Bob