Flowering cacti at the eclipse of the moon

Helena brought in the pot of many cacti from the cabin yesterday afternoon exclaiming about four very long protuberances from different cacti. I knew immediately that these were the prelude to their amazing flowers. By the time the sunset was complete three of the flowers began to emerge.

This morning I studied them with great pleasure, as they do not flower every year by any means. In fact they are a sign of the bad way the flowers have been treated, probably by under-watering. In our garden cabin they also get very hot at times, which of course also emulates the climate of deserts, their natural habitat. The flowers were all at least five inches (or about twelve centimetres) in diameter.

I attached a macro lens to my big camera but with my limited mobility I couldn't do much to maximise the conditions for recording them. The tripod remained in the cabin. The sun's rays were filtered through the leaves of the large tree outside which were shifting in the wind.

I couldn't show the cacti themselves very easily and with the limited light the fourth and unopened flowering stem remains in the background. By midnight the flowers were starting to wilt, and I then twigged that the se flowers had opened at the time of the eclipse of the moon. I wonder if there is a connection.

By the next morning the flowering stems had drooped completely but the fourth flower had opened overnight, for another day of a wondrous event of nature.

NB
Here is a fantastic short video of time-lapse images of various cacti flowers opening and closing.

and this National Geographic website – Cactus Flowers: Mother Nature’s Fireworks, where I found the video.