{"id":522,"date":"2016-02-12T22:12:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T06:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardentowerchronicles.com\/?p=522"},"modified":"2016-02-12T22:12:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T06:12:33","slug":"queen-of-the-nightbeauty-under-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/queen-of-the-nightbeauty-under-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen of the Night\/Beauty Under the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has nothing to do with the Garden Tower, but related to gardening, and it brought back good memories of my father. \u00a0 \u00a0I went to Northern California two weeks ago to visit my cousin, and was gifted with a pot of Epiphyllum\u00a0Oxypetalum (Queen of the Night\/Beauty Under the Moon). \u00a0This is the description in Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

Epiphyllum oxypetalum<\/i><\/b> (Dutchman’s pipe<\/b> or queen of the night<\/b>) is a species of cactus<\/a> and one of the most cultivated species in the genus. Though it is sometimes referred to as a nightblooming cereus<\/a>, it is not closely related to any of the species in the tribe Cereeae<\/a>, such as Selenicereus<\/i><\/a>, that are more commonly known as nightblooming cereus. All Cereus bloom at night and are terrestrial plants; all Epiphyllum<\/i> are epiphytic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Etymology[<\/p>\n

Oxypetalum (Lat.) = with acute petals, refers to the acute petals of this species.<\/p>\n

The Chinese chengyu<\/a> (four character idiom) \u66c7\u82b1\u4e00\u73fe (tan hua yi xian) uses this flower (tan-hua; \u66c7\u82b1) to describe someone who has an impressive but very brief moment of glory, like a “flash in a pan”, since the flower can take a year to bloom and only blooms over a single night. Therefore someone described as “\u66c7\u82b1\u4e00\u73fe” is generally understood to be a person who shows off or unexpectedly gains some achievement and is thought to be an exception or only lucky. The flower also has a rich history in Japan, where it is known as the \u6708\u4e0b\u7f8e\u4eba<\/a> (Gekka Bijin) or “Beauty under the Moon”.<\/p>\n

Ahh, cactus, I live in the desert, just down my alley! \u00a0And this one does not have Prickly Pears!<\/p>\n

Seriously though, among Chinese (if you have not figured out by now, I am of Chinese origin), this flower is very precious. \u00a0Suppose to bring good luck, and possesses great healing powers. \u00a0I remembered when I was a little girl, my Dad had a plant like that, and we had flower watching parties that lasted into midnight (that’s when the flower blooms). \u00a0 My dad and his friends used to have a few drinks and waited all night for the flower to open up. \u00a0The bloom stayed open for only a few minutes, and then withered, and then the bloom is used to make a tea to drink. \u00a0 \u00a0Of course I was thrilled to get a wonderful gift like that! \u00a0Thank you, cousin Tuck and Elizabeth! \u00a0Here is a picture of the plant, and pictures of the flowers which my cousin took when their \u00a0Queen of the Night showed her presence.<\/p>\n

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This has nothing to do with the Garden Tower, but related to gardening, and it brought back good memories of my father. \u00a0 \u00a0I went to Northern California two weeks ago to visit my cousin, and was gifted with a pot of Epiphyllum\u00a0Oxypetalum (Queen of the Night\/Beauty Under the Moon). \u00a0This is the description in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":530,"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenmamachronicles.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}