Something remarkable occured on the corner of San Jose and Santa Clara Avenues a few days ago – a miraculous pairing of opposites in the blooming of the Trichocereus spachianus cactus…

Something remarkable occured on the corner of San Jose and Santa Clara Avenues a few days ago…

A miraculous pairing of opposites! It
was a vision of the most delicate beauty, dancing lightly upon the most
vehemently protected and sturdy base imaginable… the flowering of the
Trichocereus spachianus, which I imagine from its name is connected
somehow to the utterly exquisite night-blooming cereus of Hawaii.

I take a walk through my neighborhood every morning, and watched as
the bizarre-looking buds began to appear on the sides of these prickly
fellows. It seemed at first as through an alien had landed, but as she
began to slowly open her robes, an altogether different vision took
shape before my eyes.

The first shy tentative newcomers were soon pressed back by the
sheer profusion of gorgeousness, and more and more of these blooms
unfurled each day. Even though they only lasted a day or so, it seemed
the parade would go on forever…

If the visual spectacle alone wasn’t enough to transform everything
within a three mile radius into pure bliss, the center of the flower
(which is a huge attractor to bees, another ‘plus’ in its favor) emanates a scent that seems as if it is the nectar of enlightenment,
it’s that sweet, that elusive, that ultimately complete and satisfying.

Everyone who came to visit me for the whole period of blooming, no
matter what time of the day or night, had to be dragged off to view
this Beauty, and no one complained once they got there.