NIGHT-BLOWING CEREUS, 



O R, 



•T^ 



CACTUS GRANDIFLORUS. 



This plant is called by Linnaeus large-flowering Cactus, on account of the comparative largeness 

 of its flower, which, in its native country, Jamaica, is often more than a foot in diameter. It has 

 the appellation also of Night-blowing Cereus from its opening its beautiful flowers after sun-set. 

 Others have styled it the Thorch Thistle, from the armature about its pentangular, articulated, and 

 climbing stem, which is leafless, succulent, and exhibits to the observer a figure equally 

 grotesque as terrific, with flowers possessing actually the blazing appearance of a torch. I have 

 sometimes seen in our hot-houses twenty or thirty of these flowers expanded in the same evening, 

 emitting all the while a fine balsamic odour. The calyx is monophyllous, that is, consisting of one 

 piece, which is deeply cleft into segments, called by botanists lacinice, which are of a bright orange, 

 and gradually diminish in size, becoming real squama, or scales, before they reach the germen, or 

 seed-vessel, which is villous, or covered with numerous hairs. The petals, or flower-leaves of the 

 corolla, are twenty in number, of a snowy whiteness, and arranged in tiers, are less pointed and 

 concave than the lacinice, having each extremity armed with a hook. These two expansions 

 LiNNiEUS figuratively calls the nuptial bed. From the germen at the bottom of the cup, arises a 

 long tube, named by botanists the style, which terminates in a many-cleft stigma. These 3 parts 

 form what is termed the pistillum, or female; around whom, in clusters, are the stamina, or males, 

 composed of curvilinear filaments, crowned by their anthem. These take their origin from the 

 calyx; hence this plant comes under the Class Icosandria and Order Monogynia of Linneeus; 

 and in the reformed System, Class Many Stamina, Order Filaments inserted into the 

 Calyx. The Cereus is thus personified by Dr. Darwin in his Loves of the Plants. 



Refulgent CEREA!...at the dusky hour 

 She seeks with pensive step the mountain -bower, 

 Bright as the blush of rising morn, and warms 

 The dull cold eye of midnight with her charms. 

 There to the skies she lifts her pencil'd brows, 

 Opes her fair lips, and breathes her virgin vows; 

 Eyes the white zenith; counts the suns that roll 

 Their distant fires, and blaze around the pole; 

 Or marks where Jove directs his glittering car 

 O'er Heaven's blue vault,... Herself a brighter star. 

 ...There as soft zephyrs sweep with pausing airs 

 Thy showy neck, and part thy shadowy hairs, 

 Sweet Maid of Night! to Cynthia's sober beams 

 Glows thy warm cheek, thy polish'd bosom gleams. 

 In crowds around thee gaze the admiring swains, 

 And guard in silence the enchanted plains; 

 Drop the still tear, or breathe the impassion'd sigh, 

 And drink inebriate rapture from thine eye. 







