sweasel.com

I started out by being an evil type and suggesting you eat the fruit, which, you may be able to do.
Because Cactus is, good, uh, well, you can eat it.
The fruits are like little balloon things.

This one looks like it’s a “Monstrose”
Which, I reconsidered how mean that was considering Uncle B’s happiness, so instead here’s info he probably already has.

https://www.pottedplants.org/plant-care/peruvian-cactus-monstrose-care-guide/

” The care of the Peruvian Cactus Monstrose plant is a complex and intriguing process that requires a specific set of lighting requirements. The provision of the right amount and type of light is crucial to the survival and growth of this unique and fascinating plant.

Well Done, Uncle Badger!

We here in SW Florida are blessed with what is evidently the right environment for these fleeting beauties. We had quite a nice growth of cereus in our back yard until a hurricane took out the tree they were in, and my niece’s property nearby has a ton on her 10 acres.

The flowers are spectacular and have a strong floral aroma, but they last only the one night. The wilted and bedraggled flowers don’t drop off for a while and so serve as reminders of their ephemeral loveliness.

Well done, Uncle B.! Sussex is NOT their natural habitat!

HERE is a dropbox link to photo I took at my home last year. If I got the sharing permissions right, you might even be able to view it! And that’s just a subset; there were more than two dozen blooms that night.

Wow! Thanks for sharing that Uncle Al.
I hope Sweasey gets a good photo!

She’ll just have to spend her life in the “conservatory” now to make sure she doesn’t miss the bloom!

Uncle Badger—that’s wonderful and amazing. I hope you have you have mounted the wildlife camera in the greenhouse.

@Uncle Al—beautiful flowers and photograph.

Thank you, Deborah – and thank you for the link, Uncle Al which, sadly, didn’t work for me. But that’s probably because I need to add some coal to my computer’s firebox (how long have I been saying I will replace this machine?).

I will go and see what has happened in the greenhouse and perhaps The Weasel will report back.

By the way – that’s a brilliant idea, Deborah! I will set the wildlife camera up and hope the flowers’ opening will cause enough motion to trigger it!

We have a bunch of these things that have followed along with us through many household migrations.

Here in Florida they are now well acclimated to outdoor living, and seasonally they develop multiple buds 2 or 3 times.

They are singularly ugly specimens, excepting when gloriously in bloom. But with the dawn, fatigue (pronounced in the French manner with accent ague).

Anyway, you can pretty much prune off a stick and stuff it into the earth and it will root and sprout in quick time.

First of the plants was named Audrey (think Little Shop of Horrors). I think we may be up to Audrey 50.0.