Blooming wonder! Cactus flowers for first time in UK...but for just 12 hours
AFTER months of patient waiting, plant lovers were rewarded with the first UK flowering of a bizarre Amazonian cactus.
But no sooner had the spectacular specimen unfurled its petals than it withered away.
Rare
The rare moonflower lives only in floodplain rainforests of the Amazon basin in South America.
However, Cambridge University Botanical Gardens has been home to one since 2015. On Saturday it flowered, three months after an 11in bud emerged from the odd-looking plant.
The event happens just once, and only for around 12 hours.
Thousands of viewers watched via a YouTube livestream, expecting to see the sweet-smelling bloom emerge at night.
However, a Gardens spokesman said its plant was a “sun lover” and “opened during the day, to keep us on our toes”.
Hours after flowering begins, the bloom’s scent turns rancid and it dies. To viewers, the cactus appears to be growing straight out of the trunk of another tree.
But in reality, it is an epiphyte – anchoring itself to another plant and getting nutrients without the need for roots.
Seed
The cactus’s flattened, leaf-like stem wound its way around a water chestnut tree.
Glasshouse superviser Alex Summers said he planned to hand-pollinate the flower, with the hope of producing seed.
POLICE who rushed to investigate reports of a body in a hedge were left relieved – after finding the bottom half of a mannequin.
A dog walker had raised the alarm after finding a pair of legs sticking out of bushes near Downham Market,
Norfolk. King’s Lynn Police later posted a picture of a relieved officer laughing at the sight of the