Late Night Bloomer   Bookseller cultivates a night-blooming cereus after hours…

We’re down to only one bud remaining on the cuttings. It measures 1.5 inches, but it doesn’t look good. It’s turning a sickly yellowish-reddish color. All the other buds, we had seven a week ago, have dropped off.  Was the soil too wet? Was it that strange “jumping cotton” pest I pinched off almost every morning? Was it the simple fact these buds were growing from leaf cuttings that had not yet rooted? We’ll never know. What I do know is that I pruned too soon. My eagerness to  share the wealth of the plant and to “improve” her shape got the better of me. In an attempt to reign in a straggly branch, I  lopped off a number of leaves that were just setting buds. They were too small to see. I’d left them to “dry” in the garage, and next thing I knew, buds were sprouting. Lots of them. What if I’d left the plant in tact? Would all these buds have survived to blossoming? Probably not. But a number of them would have, and it would have been quite a show. A beautiful shower of white and an infusion of fragrance that likely would have permeated the neighborhood.  We will not experience that particular inflorescence.  Still all is not lost. There are five healthy buds now measuring four  inches on the mother plant. It looks like these will hold, and we’ll have a late July blooming party one steamy summer night after all.