Flor de la noche in bloom tonight
My Cestrum began blooming Friday night. It's a shrub from the Carribean basin and Central America. In Mexico I've heard it called flor de la noche or huile de la noche. Books say it's called night-blooming jessamine but I've never heard anybody use that name.
It has clusters of 5-20, 1" long, tubular, very narrow, pale green flowers with five tiny petals at the mouth of the tube. They're not much to see and are easily overlooked during daylight hours. Flowers open well after dark and release a powerful sweet fragrance that carries a very long distance. I have it next to my front door. Flowers in a given cluster open for a few nights in a row, and there tend to be three clusters at each leaf axil, with the secondary clusters opening after the first cluster is finished.
During warm weather it grows in cycles of 2-3 months: new branches grow, it blooms, then it grows again. If we have a warm winter it slows down but doesn't stop. It's very tender, but usually regrows from the base if frozen. I always plant it near the house, under the eaves, for frost protection. I have flowered it in 1 gallon pots in the winter in a sunroom when I lived in cold-winter climates.
The leaves are medium green, about 4" long, and come to a point at the apex. Flower clusters arise from the leaf axils towards the ends of branches. It blooms on new wood, so after a stem blooms I cut it back almost to the base. If not regularly pruned hard, it forms a sprawling mess. The year-old wood is very soft, so it is easy to prune.
Semi-hardwood to hardwood stem cuttings root in water, or moist soil if humidity be high. It's in the nightshade family with petunias, tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. I don't know which species I have because it's never set fruit. It might be C. nocturnum, which has small purple-black fruits. In California a similar plant sometimes sets small white fruits.
There are other Cestrums that bloom in the daytime and have yellow or pink flowers, but I like this one best.
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