This plant is one of several known as the night-blooming cereus, named because its flowers only open after sunset.  This particular variety is the Epiphyllum oxypetalum, the blooms of which last only a single night, and are usually closed forever by the next sunrise.  The plant was acquired while in Los Angeles, from an unremembered source, and spent several years wasting away in an unfavored spot in the back yard, yielding only ugly, moth-eaten leaves.  More than once it was targeted for recycling, its pot being more valuable than the plant itself.  Yet, each time, for whatever reason, the small, straggly plant was spared.

One night, in June 2000, it bloomed.  An enormously large, beautiful, and fragrant flower had opened at dusk, almost unnoticed.  This was the evening after a memorial service was held for a graduate student who had recently been killed in an tragic automobile accident.  It immediately became thought of as his flower, a symbol of life's capriciousness and brevity.  After that, the plant continued to provide a few flowers per year and I started thinking of it as mine as well, as it developed for a some long years a curious habit of putting one or more of its rare displays on my (September) birthday.  

While the plant has many siblings, spread far and wide via cuttings, the original now resides in Albany, NY, a much less favorable climate.  It is pruned and brought indoors for the winter, and tries to take advantage of the short summer we have here.  I'm not sure it "knows" my birthday anymore, but I still photograph its flowers, whenever they happen to appear.