‘The Queen of the Night’: SUNY ESF, SU gather to view rare Brazilian cactus bloom

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Students from SUNY ESF and Syracuse University gathered in the ESF Greenhouse in Illick Hall on Monday night to witness a rare nighttime bloom of the Brazilian cactus known as “The Queen of the Night.”

Terry Ettinger, an Assistant Gardening Manager at ESF, said the flower is an “empathetic plant” — meaning that it grows on other plants near it. The cactus, which has been in the university’s possession since 2013, has a tentative schedule of blossoming. The plant typically blooms the first time around the 4th of July. The plant again blooms in August, the middle of September and, maybe, “a few stragglers in October,” he said.

Because of the uncertain timeline, Ettinger could not confirm the specific bloom date until Monday morning. Sierra Ciak, a freshman wildlife science major at ESF, said she saw the event posted on Instagram and convinced friends to accompany her because of the relevance to their areas of study.

“Plants in general apply to most of the majors at ESF, especially all the ones in environmental biology, like wildlife science or environmental, that’s why we have the greenhouses,” Ciak said.

Terry Ettinger, an Assistant Gardening Manager at ESF, said that scientists had to rely on flower structure alone to identify the unique plant as a part of the cacti family.

Maxine Brackbill | Photo Editor

If the cactus was in its native habitat — the tropical regions of Mexico and further south in Central America — it would bloom every night because of the consistent distribution of sunlight throughout the year, Ettinger said.

“With our really long days, right around the summer solstice, all of a sudden [the cactus is] saying, ‘Woah, I’d better get to it to form some flowers,’” he said.

The Queen of the Night has a unique evolutionary history, Ettinger said. Harsh tropical climates were too hot for the plant’s leaves, so it grew photosynthetic stems over time, meaning that its photosynthesis is conducted in the stems rather than its leaves.

Because of this, he said, the flower does not resemble a standard cactus, nor does it have spines. Ettinger said that scientists had to rely on flower structure alone to identify the unique plant as a part of the cacti family.

“The flower structure of the Queen of the Night Cactus doesn’t look like a vanilla orchid. It doesn’t look like the flower of a Norway maple tree. Doesn’t look like the flower of Rome rose,” Ettinger said. “One hundred and fifty years ago, we didn’t have artificial intelligence, we didn’t have high-tech DNA analysis. The only thing that we could count on were flower structures because they tended not to change depending upon environmental conditions.”

The cactus first bloomed between 6 and 10 p.m. on Monday. It is expected to close sometime early Tuesday morning, Ettinger said.