Night-blooming cereus makes show behind Temptation

Residents have been heading out to the GICIA Bike Path, and other locations across island, to visit night-blooming cereuses. 

Resident Ellen Cornwell was out Monday evening and photographed the plant; she knows the time of year that they bloom and caught them in the evening. 

Rick Joyce, who supervises many of the plants on the island for the GICIA and Lee County, said that the vines can be very robust, with hundreds of blooms. He said its native range is the Southwestern U.S., going into Mexico. That the plant survived the storms of the fall is surprising. 

“It has a lower salt tolerance than other plants,” said Joyce, of Forestry Resources Ecological. “Typical of all cactuses, it doesn’t like a lot of water and probably likes salt water a lot less.” 

There are plants visible from sidewalks across the island, including at 3rd and Palm, 3rd and Gilchrist and at Palm and Waterways. There are also plants at the Boca Grande Community Center by the Crowninshield.

While not native to Florida, they are not invasive. Joyce has seen other cactuses become problematic, but not the cereus. The variety on island is likely Peniocereus greggii, in the Cactaceae family, and the flowers have other benefits, other than their beauty.

“You will see moths working those flowers too,” said Joyce. “There is a whole pollinator connector with them.”